Dead ends & road maps: Building a new socialist movement

[KC]

My friend finally pared down his longer work into one that gets right to the point, which Ely was kind enough to publish for him on Kasama. This article was originally much longer - around 50 pages - but I think it gets to the krux of the problem. I agree with the vast majority of what he says here.

I know how big of an issue this is on RevLeft, given how past threads on this have gone, and I know it's a long read, but I'd recommend everyone interested in the movement at least give a quick skim and offer your response in this thread.



Road maps, dead ends, & the search for fresh ground:
How can we build the socialist movement in the 21st century?

By Dan Damage

“It is easy for good to triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the Mafia.”
Kurt Vonnegut

I can’t shake the feeling that despite our best intentions, we are wasting resources by taking roads that lead to nowhere. It doesn’t help that the main form of organization – tiny, competing groups divided by marginal differences – is out of tune with the content of our aims – “the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers.” I’ve come to feel that all the heroic effort in the world cannot invest inherently barren forms with meaning…

An outside observer might suppose this should be a historic time for the socialist movement. The global economic crisis has discredited capitalism in the minds of millions. … Unfortunately, this atmosphere has translated into few appreciable gains for the socialist movement. … The question is whether more can be done, or whether the weakness of the movement today is an inevitable outcome of the period we are in.

…

My contention is that we can take steps today to make the socialist movement healthier and more attractive, positioning it to grow and win the best activists to its ranks in the years ahead… this process will involve critically assessing the organizational forms of today’s socialist movement and launching a deep discussion on how to overcome the sectarian forms of organization and the sectarian thinking to which they give rise…

I believe that our visions of how the movement was built in the past allow many to accept the puny size of our organizations today. We know – or think we know – from studying history, that tiny, embattled forces have on numerous occasions grown to lead popular, socialist revolutions. … This type of pioneering attitude has its positive side: it’s the spirit necessary to get movements off the ground and push onward through difficult times. But it shouldn’t be a replacement for serious thinking…

The question today is how to lay the groundwork for the eventual development of a powerful socialist movement in the U.S. Many who are new to the movement often quickly ask why all the existing socialist groups can’t just get together and build a united organization, or at least work more closely together. The usual answers are that the differences between the groups are too great to justify uniting. Even if a number of groups all came together, it would just result in a still small grouping burdened by even worse infighting than exists today. … Yet after nearly eight years of socialist activism, I have come, for a variety of reasons that I will outline below, to believe that the most urgent task we face is figuring out how to overcome the divisions that exist within the movement and build a common, united organization of some sort…

(http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/17/dead-ends-road-maps-building-a-new-socialist-movement/)
Read More (http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/17/dead-ends-road-maps-building-a-new-socialist-movement/)

[Impulse97]

Wow that's not too shabby. I'll def. read some more. I've been thinking about this for a long time.

Why do we even have different parties in each nation? Workers don't have borders why should our parties and organizations? How about three simple organizations for the whole planet, a World Communist Party, a World Socialist Party and a World Anarchist Federation. Three organizations united the world over. A global face of Leftism.

[chegitz guevara]

I personally think it's an excellent essay. I've been debating whether or not to sever my ties with the SPUSA. I'd actually made the decision to quit, and this article, helped me see things from a different perspective. Rather than trying to struggle for control, we should try and create an alternative revolutionary pole within the Party.

[KC]

Yeah it's quite a long piece, even excerpted, but I hope more people on here take the time to skim through it at least, as it's really crucial. The full version will be published shortly in Cultural Logic. I had my friend send me the full version and he covers basically every major point, and most minor ones as well, as to what's wrong with the current state of the movement and where to go from here.

[Q]

I'm just skimming over it and it really looks quite similar to my thoughts on the subject. I'm definitely putting it on my reading list and give it a go next week, when I'm less busy.

[chegitz guevara]

I'm going to push it in RUG.

[Jeraldi]

I like it, and it is along the lines of what I am currently involved in. I am in a group pushing for immigrant and worker's rights that is attempting to bring many organizations together to make meaningful change in a relatively small area.

Our current focus is to help the day laborers in the city organize themselves and give them a safe place to gather.

[Tower of Bebel]

Sorry, but I don't think that this text - what its conclusion is concerned - breaks the vicious circle in any way.

In place of national membership organizations, Draper’s position was that socialists should form local circles, in their workplaces, schools, or cities. Draper drew this conclusion from his own activism, as well as his study of the history of the Bolsheviks.

Summarizing this history, he wrote,

“In the preceding period, the preliminaries for a mass party had taken shape in Russia in the form not of sects but of local workers’ circles, which remained loose, and founded loose regional associations. They had not developed as branches of a central organization but autonomously, in response to social struggles – loosely.”

…Draper argued that these circles should establish loose national connections. In his opinion, they should, make contact with a political center that makes sense from your own point of view, for help in literature, advice, and outside linkups, and work with it to whatever extent you find useful. But there is no reason against having this relationship with more than one political center, if they suit your own political views. Such a political center may even be a sect; but if you do not join it, it relates to you only as one political center among others. This relationship is a hang-loose relationship: if you do not have a vote in deciding its affairs, it is likewise true that it cannot tell you what to do by exerting its sect ‘discipline’ over your own judgment. You do not erect an organizational barrier between you as the adherent of one sect and someone else who cleaves to another sect or none. In your work, you use whatever literature you wish, whatever their source… If enough take this course to break up the sect system, that would be a good thing for the future potentialities of an American socialist movement. There is a better chance of a genuine socialist movement arising out of such a hang-loose complex of relationships than out of the fossilized world of sects…

….Here are some ideas for potential forms a new socialist movement could take :


A common website, newspaper, and/or journal, with the aim of posting important news, reports on struggles, socialist and radical analysis, and serving as a forum for *debate* and organizing ideas
A collaboration to organize a roster of talented speakers on a variety of issues and work together on building big events for them around the country. Instead of poorly organized, poorly attended events with poor presentations, these could be big forums which inspire people to activism. The roster of speakers could include people like Dahr Jamail, Chris Hedges, Cindy Sheehan, Glenn Greenwald (who is speaking at the ISO’s Socialism 2011 conference in Chicago) important figures from struggles internationally, etc.
Big regional and national socialist conferences, along the lines of the ISO’s Socialism Conference in Chicago (and the Bay Area) but even bigger and better. These could be geared not only toward socialist education but also toward developing action proposals and ideas. The fact that no initiative like this has developed in recent years is somewhat disturbing, though understandable given the logic that I’ve outlined.
Joint study groups and classes in local areas (or via the Internet), socialist education centers, etc.
Local groups of activists who join together to work on common campaigns, or report on all the different work they’re involved in, even if they are from different political trends…

In the end, that what organisations like the Socialist Alternative want. They want workers to form their own organisations, they would like to see students form circles, etc. (That's the second part of the CWI's so called "double task of the marxists": help to develop both your own organisation and the [spontanious] movements of the working class).

Look, Dan even writes that "a political center may even be a sect". All or almost all of the currently existing revolutionary organisations hope for a generalisation of the class struggle, the development of resistance (and accordingly: movements of resistance), with which they could link up, for which they could provide the necessary leadership.

So we're back at our starting point: how do we get past the sect mentality, the lack of workers' self-organisation and general inertia? By creating circles? But how?

I believe though that all the problems he mentions (narrow vision, amateurism, inertia, etc.) do exist. And I'm glad that there are people willing to openly discuss these issues. But this text still doens't provide the clues that could lead us toward some sort of a solution.

[KC]

In the end, that what organisations like the Socialist Alternative want.

That's what they say they want. In reality they are only concerned with organizing to "build the party".

[Decommissioner]

Would it not be possible to have an all encompassing party/organisation that can serve as the front line for the revolution? For example all other smaller parties and orgs can fall under is umbrella. Parties, orgs and individuals can be encouraged to submit money to the super party, which can then distribute funds down to the smaller orgs. The smaller parties and orgs can unite on common issues with this umbrella, while also having the ability to debate and voice opinions and differences without "splitting".

This kind of format can encourage people who are currently part of a party to join a greater movement with other parties, while the larger party can itself be something an individual can join.

[KC]

Yes that is not possible.

[black magick hustla]

been done, been tried, failed.

[snerfuplz]

Voting reform will be a necessity if a left party has any hope with competing with the big tent parties unless one party is replaced or the Dems move left. Anti-leftism sentiment lingering from the Cold War also is a significant problem that needs to be solved.

[graymouser]

I've had points in my life, when I was extremely demoralized, when Draper's perspective made sense to me. It seemed great, except for one thing: in the early 1970s, which were more favorable to far-left organizing than today in many ways, his perspective failed to bear any fruit. And I figured out what it is, namely, a way out for people who are tired and don't want to keep going in an organization.

That's not intended as a personal slam. Draper was probably one of the better minds of American Trotskyism, a very clear thinker and his multi volume work Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution is a master class in Marx's politics. But he built the IS almost against his will, and his heart clearly wasn't in building a left wing group at that time. And given that small groups were popping up all over the place in the early 70s, I think he needed to justify pulling away from the entire group perspective.

A political center disconnected from a party is a strange beast. The two that Draper analyzed, the Guardian (the Maoist paper, not the Grauniad) and Monthly Review, were the beneficiaries of the fact that there was no single major pole of attraction in the New Communist Movement. MR is still going because it panders to academics, which has actually born some fruit in that some of its work is excellent Marxist theory. The Guardian petered out eventually, along with all of the NCM after Mao. But I think there are more instructive examples, particularly one that took off for a while in the digital age. I think Counterpunch was, for a time, one of the better radical newsletters on the left. But now it's increasingly an irrelevance, driven by Alex Cockburn's indulgence for 9/11 truthers, white nationalists like Paul Craig Roberts, and his climate change denialism. I think this drift is rooted in the idea of a political center outside of a party.

The thing is, Counterpunch is not really accountable to anyone. There is no way to stop such a center from drifting further and further away from where it started into marginality; there is no sense of responsibility, of its content actually mattering beyond provocation. And we've lost a worthwhile resource in Counterpunch's weird slide. I don't think the particular direction of Counterpunch is necessarily the result of its form, but the reality is that political centers are more prone to drift than well rooted parties.

A political center without a party also has difficulty keeping any kind of hard political line, which is important; in a country like the US particularly you need to be very hard on things like class independence from the Democrats, and so on. Without setting a direction before the propaganda organ is created, you wind up going around and around on questions that aren't central - hell, it'd be like pretending RevLeft is a political journal. It doesn't create the approach to left politics that are needed in a party, certainly not an Iskra-like ability to project a hard line. And replacing key personnel can be difficult or even impossible; such projects rarely outlive their founders.

For comrades who are tired of the party treadmill, I can't judge morally when someone feels the need to back away. The revolution is a great devourer of people, and some want out. Clearly that's the case with Dan Damage. But it shouldn't be presented as a bold new way forward. This is a way back, and we need to be honest about that.

[chegitz guevara]

A political center disconnected from a party is a strange beast. The two that Draper analyzed, the Guardian (the Maoist paper, not the Grauniad) and Monthly Review, were the beneficiaries of the fact that there was no single major pole of attraction in the New Communist Movement. MR is still going because it panders to academics, which has actually born some fruit in that some of its work is excellent Marxist theory. The Guardian petered out eventually, along with all of the NCM after Mao. But I think there are more instructive examples, particularly one that took off for a while in the digital age. I think Counterpunch was, for a time, one of the better radical newsletters on the left. But now it's increasingly an irrelevance, driven by Alex Cockburn's indulgence for 9/11 truthers, white nationalists like Paul Craig Roberts, and his climate change denialism. I think this drift is rooted in the idea of a political center outside of a party.

The thing is, Counterpunch is not really accountable to anyone. There is no way to stop such a center from drifting further and further away from where it started into marginality; there is no sense of responsibility, of its content actually mattering beyond provocation. And we've lost a worthwhile resource in Counterpunch's weird slide. I don't think the particular direction of Counterpunch is necessarily the result of its form, but the reality is that political centers are more prone to drift than well rooted parties.

A political center without a party also has difficulty keeping any kind of hard political line, which is important; in a country like the US particularly you need to be very hard on things like class independence from the Democrats, and so on. Without setting a direction before the propaganda organ is created, you wind up going around and around on questions that aren't central - hell, it'd be like pretending RevLeft is a political journal. It doesn't create the approach to left politics that are needed in a party, certainly not an Iskra-like ability to project a hard line. And replacing key personnel can be difficult or even impossible; such projects rarely outlive their founders.

These are valid criticisms. Perhaps you'd like to share them on Kasama?

I think there is a way to force centers to be accountable. You can walk away. I stopped reading Counterpunch years ago, as it became clear that it was getting flakier and flakier. For me, it is no longer a center. Right now, Kasama serves as such a center for me. If Kasama goes off the rails, I can look elsewhere. Marxmail is another such center.

The interesting thing is, that without any impetus from the center, comrades have begun creating their own local Kasama collectives: the Fire Collective, the Spark Collective, etc. My own local collective, while it isn't a Kasama collective, could be said to be in Kasama's orbit. We read it, discuss it, and write for it.

The methods was used in the 1970s, by the NSM, as you noted. I'm not sure we can say the problem was the method. They were hampered by illusions about the nature of the period, and engaged in hyper-revolutionary work for the expected revolution in the 1980s, and we blinded sided by the conservative resurgence. Perhaps the method might have worked better had they had a better analysis of the period.

We should also consider the fact that many of the microsects also derailed and disappeared, so it wasn't a phenomenon solely related to the center theory.

[RedTrackWorker]

I don't have the time to break it down but perhaps the first thing to say about Draper's idea is that it's local and national...what happened to the international organization?

The second thing to say, I think, is graymouser's point about accountability.


I think there is a way to force centers to be accountable. You can walk away.

That's not holding them to account. That's walking away. So all the effort and resources you gave them are still theirs with no possibility of influence.

But to develop the criticism: what the fuck are these political centers based on? Who pays for the resources to develop the perspectives in that center? And if you're paying to a center that isn't an organization (i.e. no voting, no democratic centralism) then you're given your effort to and tieing your reputation to something you can't control?

What I'm trying to get at in what I feel is probably not a well-articulated way is that Draper's idea is middle-class. And I don't mean that as a pejorative but it's simply not a working-class way of building an organization, of accountability, of building reputation, working together and testing things in action, etc.

Or this idea of national conferences...you think those with the resources to do it won't exercise undue influence? Take the ISO's conference it mentions. They're well-known for censoring leftist critiques at their events.

To step back a bit, I'm against the proposal in terms of building a political organization, a party. I'm all for the development of various ways to work together from the mundane (like the NY activists calendar (http://nycal.mayfirst.org/)) to...well, I don't know of any good example of bigger instances, like a socialist conference where there's actually some kind of independent thinking fostered and open debate (that's not terribly academic and therefor limited in its own way) or other ideas the article talks about. But I will argue against the idea that those various initiatives can substitute for an international workers' party.

[North Star]

I don't have the time to break it down but perhaps the first thing to say about Draper's idea is that it's local and national...what happened to the international organization?

The second thing to say, I think, is graymouser's point about accountability.



That's not holding them to account. That's walking away. So all the effort and resources you gave them are still theirs with no possibility of influence.

But to develop the criticism: what the fuck are these political centers based on? Who pays for the resources to develop the perspectives in that center? And if you're paying to a center that isn't an organization (i.e. no voting, no democratic centralism) then you're given your effort to and tieing your reputation to something you can't control?

What I'm trying to get at in what I feel is probably not a well-articulated way is that Draper's idea is middle-class. And I don't mean that as a pejorative but it's simply not a working-class way of building an organization, of accountability, of building reputation, working together and testing things in action, etc.



Having an international can be a double edged sword. Its necessary for any possibility of a world revolution to occur, but at the same time look what happened to the Comintern. Even Lenin before his death recognized that the Comintern was too "Russian." We need some looser structure that does away with a twenty one points style system closer to the Sao Paulo Forum but more radical.
I don't quite understand what you mean by calling Draper's idea "middle class." Do you consider it middle class because it does not compare to your conception of the Bolsheviks? Building reputation and working together does not require a bureaucratic centralist model. If you and some like minded friends show up at a picket line to show solidarity, believe me you will build a reputation. Workers on strike are very appreciative of people simply showing up and love to discuss things with them.

[Tim Finnegan]

That's not holding them to account. That's walking away. So all the effort and resources you gave them are still theirs with no possibility of influence.
To be quite frank, that sounds like the Central Committees of more far-left parties than I think a lot of people would be entirely comfortable admitting. At least the non-party centres allow a relatively flexible relationship, largely on your own terms, rather than the choice of service-or-exile offered by so many of the sects.

[chegitz guevara]

That's not holding them to account. That's walking away. So all the effort and resources you gave them are still theirs with no possibility of influence.

What are you planning to give them, your life savings? The idea of centers turns the focus of organizing on its head. Instead of focusing on paper sales and fundraising for the center, you focus on building the local collective.


What I'm trying to get at in what I feel is probably not a well-articulated way is that Draper's idea is middle-class. And I don't mean that as a pejorative but it's simply not a working-class way of building an organization, of accountability, of building reputation, working together and testing things in action, etc. This was the way the RSDLP organized. There were multiple centers in the party, with very little input from below, owing to the conditions of illegality. People in the party organized local circles, and within those circles they would discuss and debate the positions of the different papers: Rabocheye Mysl, Rabocheye Dyelo, Iska, etc. Later it was around the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Within the Bolsheviks, there were different centers. It wasn't until the civil war and its aftermath that the party became the "vanguardist" organization we know of today.

The reason why Rabocheye Mysl and Rabocheye Dyelo disappeared wasn't because they were thrown out of the party. It wasn't because they lost a vote. It was because the arguments in Iskra persuaded the members of the RSDLP that those papers didn't know what they were talking about. People simply stopped sending them money, stopped using their papers.

Obviously, simply because the Russians did it and made a revolution doesn't mean we should do it. Our conditions are very different. Yet, whatever it is we have been doing, it isn't working. We need to try something else. Even if we get it wrong at first, we need to keep trying something different until we find something that works. Because the model of the Bolsheviks from the civil war period has failed us for ninety years now. I don't think it's a matter of just applying it correctly.

[RedTrackWorker]

First, on the historical question of "this is how the Bolsheviks organized pre-1917", I think that Twenty Years in Underground Russia: Memoirs of a Rank-and-File Bolshevik (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bobrovskaya/twenty-years/index.htm) provides ample evidence to refute that. Due to illegality, most workers related to the Bolsheviks as a "political center", one could say that, but the Bolsheviks were built--unevenly to be sure--in the direction of a democratic centralist vanguard. There's the famous Trotsky quote on Lenin being right pre-1917 because of the serious requirements of a revolution.


What are you planning to give them, your life savings? The idea of centers turns the focus of organizing on its head. Instead of focusing on paper sales and fundraising for the center, you focus on building the local collective.

And this is why I don't mean "middle-class" as a slur--this idea that we don't need a "center"--that we can "focus" on building local collectives is not, I don't think, a working class method of struggle or organization and of the tasks required for revolution.

Lenin critiqued the Second International as a mail-box international--it wasn't really centralized and now people are arguing to go for mailbox national organizations. The working class paid in blood for the accomplishment of building the Third and Fourth Internationals--in working out program, strategy, tactics and worldview involved in their creation. I'm not willing to just give up those accomplishments without a thorough-going analysis of how to go beyond them.

And Draper's proposal and the other arguments do not address the best arguments made in the fight for the Third and Fourth International, so I'm not particularly inclined to pay them much attention, anymore than I am Cockshott's anti-Zimmerwald nonsense in another thread, or the "MLs" continued insistence that "class struggle" continues under socialism.


Even if we get it wrong at first, we need to keep trying something different until we find something that works. Because the model of the Bolsheviks from the civil war period has failed us for ninety years now. I don't think it's a matter of just applying it correctly.

One could just as easily argue that fighting for socialist revolution has failed for this long so let's try something else. Deciding if something else is required needs an analysis not an empirical assertion that it hasn't worked for X length of time.

[KC]

All or almost all of the currently existing revolutionary organisations hope for a generalisation of the class struggle, the development of resistance (and accordingly: movements of resistance), with which they could link up, for which they could provide the necessary leadership.

Sure, but they're working within a framework that prevents such organization. The sect is a mode of production and implicit in its framework is a structure and process that works against the development of broad based organizations and non-sect politics. Non-sect organizations to a sect is a field of battle, whereby they enter to turn others to their side and ultimately win it over.

This doesn't sound bad at first glance, and in a sense it's not. But the problem with it is that the goal becomes the reproduction of the sect (whoops, almost typed cult) and not the development of class struggle as a whole. The dogma and rigidity that is implicit in a sect goes completely against the idea of forming organizations based on the principles outlined in the above text.



So we're back at our starting point: how do we get past the sect mentality, the lack of workers' self-organisation and general inertia? By creating circles? But how?I think the answer is developing forms of organization and discussion that work parallel to the sects. One cannot create an organization on an anti-sect basis, because then it's just another sect. Nor can one disown the current sects. So the answer lies in creating new forms of organization and new areas of discussion where people can start working together more across party lines and with unaffiliated socialists which would have the ultimate goal of subordinating sectists interests to that of the movement as a whole.



The thing is, Counterpunch is not really accountable to anyone. There is no way to stop such a center from drifting further and further away from where it started into marginality; there is no sense of responsibility, of its content actually mattering beyond provocation. And we've lost a worthwhile resource in Counterpunch's weird slide. I don't think the particular direction of Counterpunch is necessarily the result of its form, but the reality is that political centers are more prone to drift than well rooted parties.

I think this speaks of the lack of competency of Counterpunch's editorial board more than anything. You seem to think that there is only this or a sect, and that simply isn't the case.


A political center without a party also has difficulty keeping any kind of hard political line, which is important; in a country like the US particularly you need to be very hard on things like class independence from the Democrats, and so on.This seems to confirm my view. Do you think it's impossible for a Marxist publication/news source to exist without a party? Because that's the dichotomy you're seemingly putting forward.


It doesn't create the approach to left politics that are needed in a party, certainly not an Iskra-like ability to project a hard line.

Iskra wasn't affiliated with a party upon its founding. A good portion of the earlier Iskra works were regarding the formation of the RSDLP. Nor was it an official party organ, competing with dozens of other publications such as Rabocheye Dyelo and Rabochaya Mysl. The relationship of Iskra to the RSDLP is certainly incomparable to those of "official" sect publications.


I don't have the time to break it down but perhaps the first thing to say about Draper's idea is that it's local and national...what happened to the international organization?

I think that its localism/nationalism is actually one of the most important aspects of the work. Socialist sects are so caught up in their internationalism that they are partially/completely removed from local/national issues. The majority of disputes among American socialists involve events going on outside of the US, such as Israel/Palestine or the degeneration of the Soviet Union. Many of these positions have become prerequisites to membership. This is an area that blatantly proves the irrelevancy of many sects.

Who in the US that isn't a socialist cares whether or not the USSR was a degenerated workers' state or state capitalist? How is that at all relevant to what is going on in Madison, WI, or California, or anywhere else in the US?

This has a profound impact on the ground, in their relation with other sects and with the movement as a whole. I particularly enjoy the Madison example, as it's both recent and one of the most shining examples of the failure of the left.

In this example, we have Socialist Alternative, the PSL and the IWW iirc. They're all socialists (well I'm stretching with IWW but bear with me) that want to broaden the class struggle and "hope for a generalisation of the class struggle, the development of resistance (and accordingly: movements of resistance), with which they could link up, for which they could provide the necessary leadership." Right?

Then why did they all have three separate events, organized in isolation by the three orgs respectively, for a general strike? I think the others did this, but only remember that I confirmed regarding Socialist Alternative, but why did those events have speakers only from their own respective organizations, identified as union members/leaders?

Why wasn't there a joint effort between PSL, SA and IWW on this? The answer is ridiculous: they hate working with each other because of their difference of opinion on . They're scared the other orgs are going to attempt to hijack the event, when in turn they're actually interested in hijacking the event themselves (this is called "leadership" nowadays).

So, they say they want to "broaden the class struggle" or whatever but when it comes to real, concrete issues and working in the real world they're more interested in perpetuating their own little meaningless sect, which is detrimental to the members of the sects themselves for being brainwashed and for the broader movement as a whole for sidelining it.

These exact same issues and concerns are prevalent in your post here:



Or this idea of national conferences...you think those with the resources to do it won't exercise undue influence? Take the ISO's conference it mentions. They're well-known for censoring leftist critiques at their events.What about if your organization was as large as the ISO, and you hosted such a conference? Would you say the same thing about yourselves?


But to develop the criticism: what the fuck are these political centers based on? Who pays for the resources to develop the perspectives in that center? And if you're paying to a center that isn't an organization (i.e. no voting, no democratic centralism) then you're given your effort to and tieing your reputation to something you can't control?Democratic centralism doesn't exist in sects. By definition it cannot, because it is a method that requires a firm root in a strong class struggle movement. It cannot exist outside of such a movement or in such an amateurish, limited form of organization as a sect.

Further, you're showcasing rather well the live-or-die, life-on-the-line outlook of sectists. With a sect, one's reputation certainly is tied to it, because the entire structure of a sect is based around rigidity, around agreeing entirely with the political outlook of one's sect and with defending it to the death against others. There is no flexibility in terms of discussion, there is no changing minds. If you change your mind you're out.

But what of a political center? How is one's reputation tied to it? What is wrong with changing one's mind, or disagreeing with something? Is one's reputation ruined by believing something that they didn't use to?



To step back a bit, I'm against the proposal in terms of building a political organization, a party.I view Draper's proposal as merely a start. I have absolutely no hope in the American socialist left of building a "party" - that is, a real party, rooted in the class struggle, based on a broad form of organization that encourages debate and discussion, and is loose in its membership - until there is a significant move away from the sect form of organization.

This is how Draper (and Dan, too) view the work. Nobody was arguing for substitutionism, but rather that the American left isn't anywhere near developed enough to move towards the organization of an actual party.



Obviously, simply because the Russians did it and made a revolution doesn't mean [I]we should do it. Our conditions are very different.

We're talking about general principles of organization among the class struggle here. I think that the very basic principles we're laying down can be applied anywhere, but that their concrete expression is certainly going to depend on the circumstances.


First, on the historical question of "this is how the Bolsheviks organized pre-1917", I think that Twenty Years in Underground Russia: Memoirs of a Rank-and-File Bolshevik (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/bobrovskaya/twenty-years/index.htm) provides ample evidence to refute that. Due to illegality, most workers related to the Bolsheviks as a "political center", one could say that, but the Bolsheviks were built--unevenly to be sure--in the direction of a democratic centralist vanguard. There's the famous Trotsky quote on Lenin being right pre-1917 because of the serious requirements of a revolution.

Even in the most extreme environment of illegality and oppression under the Tsar, the Iskra group and the early RSDLP was more flexible and loose than any socialist sect currently in existence. I think the Bolshevik/Menshevik split actually is supportive of the indictment against sects. It "happened" in 1903 yet wasn't formalised until 1912. In other words, even though there was a "split" in 1903 the two sides still worked together and many changed sides quite often, most notably Trotsky.

[RED DAVE]

I am probably the only person at Revleft who actually worked with Draper in the IS and had to confront his program. Frankly, he was full of shit. Part of what was going on in his head was the fact that the IS was slowly, steadily engaged in what we called "industrialization": the placing of our white, middle-class members into the working class. Part of that program was the notion at the time that we would not seek high office in unions. At best, we would run as shop stewards, delegates, etc. Draper's wife, Anne, was a high official in AFSCME in California, and another of his followers, whose name escapes me, was also a local president.

Draper came to New York to present his program, in 1971, and he accused the IS or not orienting towards the working class. This was an out-and-out lie. In New York, for example, we had successfully placed comrades in the telephone workers, letter carriers and teamsters unions. In fact, over half the membership was "industrialized."

Draper could not, or would not, see that the IS was carrying out precisely the kind of program that it needed to carry out, with some success. We precisely were orienting towards the working class. We continued to build during the early and mid-70s, but when the working class began its retreat in the late 70s, comrades were left, basically stranded but not abandoned. Some of the work that Solidarity and the ISO is engaged in now is a result of that early work.

Again, Draper was wrong. What is necessary? Regroupment, rebuilding, education, etc. Of course. But, and I have said this again and again to younger comrades: the differences between the tendencies are real. As the current working class impulse accelerates, and the groups attempt to develop and work their programs, we will see slow, fitful, contradictory, but real growth in some groups, which will accelerate as time goes by. Some will stay sects: angry, petit-bourgeois and useless.

RED DAVE

[Tim Finnegan]

And this is why I don't mean "middle-class" as a slur--this idea that we don't need a "center"--that we can "focus" on building local collectives is not, I don't think, a working class method of struggle or organization and of the tasks required for revolution.
What does this actually mean? :confused: It sounds to me like its bordering on political essentialism...

[KC]

I am probably the only person at Revleft who actually worked with Draper in the IS and had to confront his program. Frankly, he was full of shit. Part of what was going on in his head was the fact that the IS was slowly, steadily engaged in what we called "industrialization": the placing of our white, middle-class members into the working class. Part of that program was the notion at the time that we would not seek high office in unions. At best, we would run as shop stewards, delegates, etc. Draper's wife, Anne, was a high official in AFSCME in California, and another of his followers, whose name escapes me, was also a local president.

Draper came to New York to present his program, in 1971, and he accused the IS or not orienting towards the working class. This was an out-and-out lie. In New York, for example, we had successfully placed comrades in the telephone workers, letter carriers and teamsters unions. In fact, over half the membership was "industrialized."

Draper could not, or would not, see that the IS was carrying out precisely the kind of program that it needed to carry out, with some success. We precisely were orienting towards the working class. We continued to build during the early and mid-70s, but when the working class began its retreat in the late 70s, comrades were left, basically stranded but not abandoned. Some of the work that Solidarity and the ISO is engaged in now is a result of that early work.

Again, Draper was wrong.

I don't see what any of this has to do with either the OP or Draper's pieces on sectism.

[RED DAVE]

I don't see what any of this has to do with either the OP or Draper's pieces on sectism.I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not being deliberately obtuse.

What I'm saying is that Draper's program was at least in part drawn from his own desire to separate from the IS, which was at the time acting in a very non-sectarian way. I think it's obvious, theoretically, the weaknesses of his notions, but, in practice, they were even worse.

RED DAVE

[KC]

What I'm saying is that Draper's program was at least in part drawn from his own desire to separate from the IS, which was at the time acting in a very non-sectarian way. I think it's obvious, theoretically, the weaknesses of his notions, but, in practice, they were even worse.

I don't see how the OP necessarily amounts to workerism (or Draper's two articles, for that matter). That is why I don't see how your practical criticism of Draper has anything to do with the OP or his two writings on sectism.

[RED DAVE]

I don't see how the OP necessarily amounts to workerism (or Draper's two articles, for that matter). That is why I don't see how your practical criticism of Draper has anything to do with the OP or his two writings on sectism.Sigh!


Draper argued that these circles should establish loose national connections. In his opinion, they should, make contact with a political center that makes sense from your own point of view, for help in literature, advice, and outside linkups, and work with it to whatever extent you find useful.One more time, what I am saying is that Draper's program, far from being an attempt at nonsectarian left politics was and is, essentially, a retreat from politics.

RED DAVE

[KC]

One more time, what I am saying is that Draper's program, far from being an attempt at nonsectarian left politics was and is, essentially, a retreat from politics.

Okay, then explain how that is the case based on either the OP or his works on sectism...

[RED DAVE]

Okay, then explain how that is the case based on either the OP or his works on sectism...Comrade, what is the problem?

Basically, I am saying, based on Draper's actual behavior, that his notion for a political center, as opposed to a party, was a cover for him dropping out of activist politics at a very crucial time.`And, a careful analysis of his concept, compared with the actual performance of the Bolsheviks, including the publication of Iskra, also shows that this is, essentially, political escapism, not an alternative to a party.

RED DAVE

[chegitz guevara]

First, on the historical question of "this is how the Bolsheviks organized pre-1917", I think that Twenty Years in Underground Russia: Memoirs of a Rank-and-File Bolshevik (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bobrovskaya/twenty-years/index.htm) provides ample evidence to refute that. Due to illegality, most workers related to the Bolsheviks as a "political center", one could say that, but the Bolsheviks were built--unevenly to be sure--in the direction of a democratic centralist vanguard. There's the famous Trotsky quote on Lenin being right pre-1917 because of the serious requirements of a revolution.

I fail to understand how an organization that expelled exactly ONE person in its history could be considered democratic centralist. Nor how a democratic centralist would tolerate leaders and members who would publicly criticize the direction of the Party, including when Lenin threatened to publish his articles in non-party papers if the party wouldn't print his articles.

There has been quite a bit of rewriting of the history of the Bolsheviks, which many on the left and right accept as gospel, but more and more researchers are uncovering evidence, evidence that was never hidden, but simply ignored.

The Mensheviks were just as important an organization in Russia, and often, larger and more influential among the workers than the Bolsheviks.


And this is why I don't mean "middle-class" as a slur--this idea that we don't need a "center"--that we can "focus" on building local collectives is not, I don't think, a working class method of struggle or organization and of the tasks required for revolution.

This is really kinda meaningless.


One could just as easily argue that fighting for socialist revolution has failed for this long so let's try something else. Deciding if something else is required needs an analysis not an empirical assertion that it hasn't worked for X length of time.

You could, but I wouldn't. I'm not a Trotskyist.

And many of us have analyzed the utter failure of a particular method of organizing that has failed for 90 years to produce a single positive result, a method that came into existence only after the Bolsheviks won power, so it can't even claim that victory. But because it has been religiously linked to the Russian Revolution and Lenin, few people ever took a real look. They just assumed it was true.

[KC]

Comrade, what is the problem?

The problem, as I've quite clearly stated, is that you're dismissing the OP based on something irrelevant to it, i.e. your personal experience with Draper and his actions towards socialist orgs at the time.


And, a careful analysis of his concept, compared with the actual performance of the Bolsheviks, including the publication of Iskra, also shows that this is, essentially, political escapism, not an alternative to a party.

Okay, then cut the crap about Draper and elaborate on this...

[RED DAVE]

Comrade, what is the problem?
The problem, as I've quite clearly stated, is that you're dismissing the OP based on something irrelevant to it, i.e. your personal experience with Draper and his actions towards socialist orgs at the time.I don't think my point is irrelevant at all, but you're entitled to your opinion.


And, a careful analysis of his concept, compared with the actual performance of the Bolsheviks, including the publication of Iskra, also shows that this is, essentially, political escapism, not an alternative to a party.
Okay, then cut the crap about Draper and elaborate on this...Others have done so quite well. Frankly, I think your dialog with RedTrackWorker or the remarks of chegitz guevara are a hell of lot more worthy than what's going on between you and I, which strikes me as you grousing about something I can't quite put my finger on.

Whatever.

RED DAVE

[RedTrackWorker]

I view Draper's proposal as merely a start. I have absolutely no hope in the American socialist left of building a "party" - that is, a real party, rooted in the class struggle, based on a broad form of organization that encourages debate and discussion, and is loose in its membership - until there is a significant move away from the sect form of organization.

This is how Draper (and Dan, too) view the work. Nobody was arguing for substitutionism, but rather that the American left isn't anywhere near developed enough to move towards the organization of an actual party.

Few would argue the U.S. left can form a "party" now. If your interpretation of the proposal is for it as a path to a party rather than a substitute for it, we may have fewer differences. I still think that the "vanguard of the vanguard" will have to organize itself--which in this period in most countries can only take the form of a sect, so I think we disagree there, but of course I'm in favor of the workers' movement developing far more forms of cooperation, discussion, etc. and if a sect stands in the way of that, that is truly sectarianism (putting the interests of the sect before that of the movement).

But I don't think it's the idea or goal of the sect-form that will change things, but instead the level of class struggle and learning from that struggle.