Socialist Alternative

[Red Sun]

I've been a lurker of this forum for a while, but I was motivated to post when I attended a recent meeting of Socialist Alternative. They seem pretty genuinely revolutionary, and I'm thinking of joining, but I was wondering if anyone here is a member or has dealt with them. If so, what kind of experience did you have with them? Also, what do people think about their city council campaign in Seattle?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I'm in SocAlt. I've had a very good experience with them. Before I joined SA I shopped around, I was either in or on the periphery of other socialist groups, I found SA to be the best in terms of theory and activist approach. They concentrate on training their member to be revolutionary activists. After joining I read and disusessed books and historical events I should have read years ago.

I'm not directly involved in the Sawant campaign.She is showing up the hypocrasy of the Dems who run Seattle and Washington State.heck out her debates on Youtubre. Her campaign has been critricised on this forum by anarchists and leftcoms (who don't believe i any electoral participation) and also by Marxists who think the campaign isn't revolutionary enough. I feel she is pursuing the correct approach at this time.

[Red Sun]

Yeah, I went to SocAlt at first just because they were only group that was active in the area, but they seem pretty good. I was skeptical of the whole campaigning aspect at first. But, at least from what some of the people at the local branch have said, it sounds like there are ways to avoid people who (hypothetically) get elected from being co-opted into capitalism. For example, accepting only a working class wage and being recallable.

Still, I'd be curious to know what some of the criticisms of the campaign are.

[Art Vandelay]

I'm in socialist alternative here in Canada. My experience since joining has been positive. I've felt that the organization has been extremely good to me, I've been offered 500$ and 250$ to take trips to Belgium for the CWI summer school and to go to Minneapolis to help out with Ty Moore's election campaign, respectively (even though I've barely been able to pay dues since joining). I've also found our internal democracy here in Canada to be very good. Despite the fact that I was relatively new to the group when we were finalizing our statements for the launch of our website, I was still able to get both of my proposals accepted. So while I don't have first hand experience with socialist alternative in the states, I see no reason why your experience wouldn't mirror my own here in Canada, plus all the conversation I've had with U.S. comrades have been great.

[Dabrowski]

If you love cops and prison guards, SAlt is the group for you!

[Red Sun]

Could you clarify this? I feel like your referring to some incident that I'm not aware of.

[Dabrowski]

Read "Her Majesty's Social Democrats In Bed With the Police (http://www.internationalist.org/hermajestyssocialdemocratspolice0709.html)" from The Internationalist No. 29 (Summer 2009). Basically these Labourite reformists want the bourgeoisie's guard dogs to be part of the labor movement that they exist to oppress.

[Red Sun]

That article did raise some important issues, and I'd be curious to hear someone else from CWI respond. However, it was also responding to the publication of the Socialist Party of England and Wales, which means that it doesn't necessarily represent a position of the CWI as a whole, or Socialist Alternative in the US.

[CyM]

If you love cops and prison guards, SAlt is the group for you!

Down with Lenin and Trotsky, how dare they reach out to the cossacks, the riot police of czarist Russia? Cop lovers!

[Per Levy]

Down with Lenin and Trotsky, how dare they reach out to the cossacks, the riot police of czarist Russia? Cop lovers!

oh i there a revolution in the usa i havnt heard of, like in the time the bolsheviks came to power? i must have missed that. also, the police of the usa is one of the most anti-worker and anti-poor instituions one can think of, upholding racial and social discrimination and killing poor people because they happen to be black. or to say it as it is, the police is the enemy and not a potential ally.

[Dabrowski]

Down with Lenin and Trotsky, how dare they reach out to the cossacks, the riot police of czarist Russia? Cop lovers!

The cossacks were not cops, they were conscript soldiers from the class-divided Don peasantry. If you ever read Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution (quoted in the Internationalist article) he explicitly contrasts the attitude taken by the revolutionaries towards the cossacks on one hand, and the police on the other. In any case, the Bolshevik policy toward the rank and file of an imperialist army has never been to advocate for its "trade union rights" outside of the struggle against imperialist war and militarism, but to split it from the bourgeois officers and win it over to the side of the international working class.

But this is all pseudo-theoretical flimflam from CyM to obscure the Grantites (and Taaffeites) craven bowing to "their own" imperialist masters, of which their solicitous orientation toward the bourgeoisie's racist murdering guard dogs is but one particularly disgusting symptom.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The International Group,of which Dabrowski is a member, is famous for being super sectarian, regarding themselves as the only true Trotskyists and Marxists. Their activist approach, like that of other Spart groups, is not to engage in debate but rather to heckle from the sidelines. Fredbergen, (an IS leader and banned from almost every leftist forum, including this one for his support of NAMBLA) has heckled SocAlt and other groups in real life at many events.The IS, like the Sparts, are both funny and annoying at the same time.

I admit I'm not super knowledgeble about the situation Dabrowski referenced. UK comrades could probably add more. Its complicated but there may be times when it could be legitimate to support a strike among the "special body of armed men". The CWI/SocAlt are certainly not "cop lovers".

[Red Sun]

I might try asking them about their position on the police next time I meet with them. However, one position taken by a branch in a different country is probably not going to change whether or not I join, especially when they're the only option.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

The analysis of the police is a point of contention that I have brought up before in my branch and one of the good things about the CWI is that it allows this debate. In reality, we don't really engage with the police that much at all except if we're forced to on demonstrations or during other actions etc. Most of the comrades in my branch have experienced first hand the shit the police can throw at you from the miners strikes, the poll tax organising and the section 28 demos. Practically it amounts to not antagonising the armed body of the state when you don't need to which is something I can agree with even if I think the added suggestion of attempting to split the police down class lines seems like a futile tactic to me. It's certainly not anything at the forefront of our strategy.

[Red Sun]

It's good to know that CWI does allow differences of opinion on stuff like that. I agree with your view on the whole police issue, too.

[Five Year Plan]

Down with Lenin and Trotsky, how dare they reach out to the cossacks, the riot police of czarist Russia? Cop lovers!

This short one-liner is the second time in two days you've misconstrued Lenin's or Trotsky's position in order to defend the importance of appealing to petty bourgeois elements. I was going to correct you again, but Dabrowski beat me to it. What I would like to know is why you think the petty bourgeoisie is so crucial to the working class movement that you are willing to engage in misleading cherry-picking to give it the veneer of revolutionary respectability.

Lenin and Trotsky were willing to work in common action with petty bourgeois elements in pursuit of immediate pro-worker reformers, but they did so as open revolutionaries struggling for those reforms while propagandizing for socialism and explicitly advancing a revolutionary program in the midst of those elements. They were also willing to admit petty bourgeois elements into the Bolshevik party if they agreed to fight for the party's revolutionary program. What they were not willing to do, ever, was to bury their party's revolutionary program for the sake of attracting as large a coalition as possible. Even on the rare occasion when they electorally supported the petty bourgeois candidates of workers' parties, they did so critically, from the perspective of their revolutionary program, as a sign of good faith with workers who were already involved in a process of grassroots struggle intense enough to help them to learn from the mistake of supporting alien class leadership. The goal that drove their actions every step of the way was to build an explicitly revolutionary party, not a multi-class bloc that they hoped would spontaneously grow over into a revolutionary party some day in the future.


The International Group,of which Dabrowski is a member, is famous for being super sectarian, regarding themselves as the only true Trotskyists and Marxists. Their activist approach, like that of other Spart groups, is not to engage in debate but rather to heckle from the sidelines. Fredbergen, (an IS leader and banned from almost every leftist forum, including this one for his support of NAMBLA) has heckled SocAlt and other groups in real life at many events.The IS, like the Sparts, are both funny and annoying at the same time.

I admit I'm not super knowledgeble about the situation Dabrowski referenced. UK comrades could probably add more. Its complicated but there may be times when it could be legitimate to support a strike among the "special body of armed men". The CWI/SocAlt are certainly not "cop lovers".

Why would you condemn the IG and the Sparts for "heckling from the sidelines" when this post is basically a perfect example of it? And what do you mean by "heckling," anyway? I'm not a supporter of either organization, but my understanding is that they attend public fora to express their political criticisms of rival groups. The criticisms are political, unlike the bulk of your post, and are not about blowing raspberries and flippantly ridiculing. If you have political criticisms you want to make of either group's approach to party building, start another thread. If you have a political disagreement you wish to express regarding Dabrowski's post about the CWI position on the class position of police and prison guards, express it. That's what people serious about revolutionary politics do and expect in return, not gossip about whether this or that group's members are "funny."


I've been a lurker of this forum for a while, but I was motivated to post when I attended a recent meeting of Socialist Alternative. They seem pretty genuinely revolutionary, and I'm thinking of joining, but I was wondering if anyone here is a member or has dealt with them. If so, what kind of experience did you have with them? Also, what do people think about their city council campaign in Seattle?

Predictably you have received positive responses about the American CWI section from members of other CWI sections, and generally less than positive responses from people who aren't members. I'm going to be honest with you, the answer to this question depends upon what you hope to get out of joining. To get your feet wet? To make friends with other people who won't look at you like you're from Mars because you have a copy of State and Revolution on your bookshelf? Then the CWI would obviously be suitable. As a group you hope to participate in for years and years as a vehicle for advancing revolutionary politics? I would be more skeptical about the move.

While taking a lot of heat for his criticism, Dabrowski is correct. How effective can any group be in moving forward revolutionary politics when they make a point, at a low period of struggle, of trying to build solidarity with police officers and prison guards?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Predictably you have received positive responses about the American CWI section from members of other CWI sections, and generally less than positive responses from people who aren't members. I'm going to be honest with you, the answer to this question depends upon what you hope to get out of joining.
Agreed with this even if I disagree with your analysis of the CWI as a whole. In my home city there is pretty much literally the CPB, the Socialist Party and the SWP who do regular organising. I hung around on the periphery of these groups for a while and found the Socialist Party to be the most grounded with the working class and engaging in actual struggle alongside the theoretic debate but that's not to say that everyone has the same experience. I wouldn't want someone to join the party arbitrarily and then get frustrated and alienated enough to burn out and drop out of the movement all together.


While taking a lot of heat for his criticism, Dabrowski is correct. How effective can any group be in moving forward revolutionary politics when they make a point, at a low period of struggle, of trying to build solidarity with police officers and prison guards?
As I said, this is a point of contention for me and I hadn't even joined the party at the time of his article. However, my understanding is that during the early periods of supporting the national shop stewards network, the most vocal amongst the trade unionists were the POA who were frustrated that they couldn't take any action and the Socialist Party took the move (wrongly in my opinion) to extend a hand to them in support. It's difficult to say what sort of strategy I would have advocated considering the POA's illegal strikes to prevent privatisation of prisons but I'm certain a more nuanced position would have been better.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Why would you condemn the IG and the Sparts for "heckling from the sidelines" when this post is basically a perfect example of it? And what do you mean by "heckling," anyway? I'm not a supporter of either organization, but my understanding is that they attend public fora to express their political criticisms of rival groups. The criticisms are political, unlike the bulk of your post, and are not about blowing raspberries and flippantly ridiculing. If you have political criticisms you want to make of either group's approach to party building, start another thread. If you have a political disagreement you wish to express regarding Dabrowski's post about the CWI position on the class position of police and prison guards, express it. That's what people serious about revolutionary politics do and expect in return, not gossip about whether this or that group's members are "funny."


?

The Sparts and the IG "attend public fora" not to openly engage in debate and to advocate for their position but quite literally to heckle.They denounce every other group as "class collaborationist pseudo socialists". They are deliberately disruptive-I've personally seen them do this many times.They are not taken seriously on the left.

The IG and Sparts denounce every organization which is not them. (In the article Dabrowski posted the IMT, CWI and SWP and anarchists all were denounced. In Sparticoid literature every other left org is "working for the bosses") That is their modus operandi. Dabrowski's post was another example of this.

Its completely legitimate to open a debate on orientation to the police, prison guards, etc Its not legitimate to take a complicated incident to sneer in one or two lines about Socialist Alternative (who are not even in the UK) as "cop lovers"

Interestingly the IG accuse their parent organisation the "Spartacus League" of also being cop lovers for supporting a police strike in Brazil.

[Five Year Plan]

The Sparts and the IG "attend public fora" not to openly engage in debate and to advocate for their position but quite literally to heckle.They denounce every other group as "class collaborationist pseudo socialists". They are deliberately disruptive-I've personally seen them do this many times.They are not taken seriously on the left.

What's your sample for drawing this conclusion? One event? Two events? I've also seen the SL do their little thing, and while I wasn't particularly impressed by it, and thought it was a poor approach to party building, it's not like they were behaving the way those ultra-sectarians in Code Pink do at congressional hearings.

The reason I responded to your post was that I found it to be an attempt to dodge an important criticism on a specific political issue by diverting attention to issues of style in order to discredit the person making the criticism. That is more sectarian than any of the SL/IG behavior you've described because it aims to obscure political issues critically important to the working class movement in order to deflect criticisms of your group. Placing the sect above establishing and defending working-class movement principles is the definition of sectarianism, isn't it?


The IG and Sparts denounce every organization which is not them. (In the article Dabrowski posted the IMT, CWI and SWP and anarchists all were denounced. In Sparticoid literature every other left org is "working for the bosses") That is their modus operandi. Dabrowski's post was another example of this.Dabrowski criticized the CWI's position on a particular issue. You haven't defended that position, or pointed out where the criticism is off base. I guess you just don't like that Dabrowski made the criticism. You're very sensitive, aren't you? Does this mean that the CWI doesn't criticize other groups? But wait a minute, aren't you criticizing and denouncing the SL and the IG here in this thread? At least Dabrowski's criticism was political, comrade, and not about hurt feelings.


Its completely legitimate to open a debate on orientation to the police, prison guards, etc Its not legitimate to take a complicated incident to sneer in one or two lines about Socialist Alternative (who are not even in the UK) as "cop lovers"Dabrowski's and the IG's criticism is of the CWI line that the police are workers. Their criticism is not confined to a single incident, however "complicated" that incident might have been.

[Dabrowski]

Interestingly the IG accuse their parent organisation the "Spartacus League" of also being cop lovers for supporting a police strike in Brazil.

I would like to know who this "Spartacus League" is. :rolleyes:

And I would like to know where the IG has accused the "Spartacus League," or the Spartacist League for that matter, of supporting police "strikes" in Brazil.

One issue that does divide the IG from the SL (and the CWI) is that the IG supported the fight of its comrades in Brazil to expel the police from the municipal workers union in Volta Redonda, Brazil's Steel City. The SL fled from that struggle and broke its former fraternal relations with the Brazilian comrades of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil, literally one day before the union meeting that was planned to vote the disaffiliation of the police was attacked by military police. But the centrist SL claims, on paper, to be for "cops out of the unions" and has never, to my knowledge, supported police "strikes." With the CWI it is different.

[G4b3n]

Let us drop the sectarianism, please.
I am an anarchist and I fully support any attempts to campaign by any sort of socialist party. It doesn't matter what theories you adhere to, they won't assure that there is enough food on the tables of the working poor, and the liberal democrats don't appear to give a shit beyond rhetoric.

[sixdollarchampagne]

From my experience, I would have to say that Dabrowski is right and Lenina is wrong. I followed the activities of the Sparts for some years, when I used to live near Boston, and I have never seen the Sparts act disruptively at a public meeting of any other tendency. What the Sparts and the IG did do, was to ask pointed questions that, quite correctly, exposed the opportunism of other groups on the left. That's not disruption; given that the fate of the working class is at stake, it would be irresponsible not to question the astonishing assertion by Socialist Alternative/CWI that cops and screws/prison guards are allies (!!) of working people (to take a random example), when there is a vast amount of historical experience showing just how false that CWI claim is. I have a close friend who is innocent of any knowledge of Marxism, yet, from his time living on the streets, he understands that cops are not on the side of labor, i.e., he has a better grasp of reality than the CWI does (and Trotsky himself was very clear that, when a worker joins the police, he ceases to be a proletarian and becomes a cop for the bourgeoisie).

To address Lenina's complaint that the Sparts criticize every other group on the left, it is instructive to remember how nearly the entire US left backed Obama's first presidential campaign (as well as constantly supporting the Democrats, a trait of the US left), which shows just how opportunist the "left" is, in this country.

And it is not sectarian to disagree with opportunist politics. There is no mass party of the working class in the US (only tiny groups, that are largely peripheral to the toiling masses), so sectarianism is not a possibility, despite what opportunists constantly claim.

[Red Sun]

Predictably you have received positive responses about the American CWI section from members of other CWI sections, and generally less than positive responses from people who aren't members.

Yeah, in retrospect I probably should have thought harder before posting this whole topic. It was just an invitation for arguing.


I'm going to be honest with you, the answer to this question depends upon what you hope to get out of joining.Ultimately, I won't know whether it would be a long term commitment until I've actually been a member for a while. I'm sure there are other things that I disagree with the party line on as well, but that doesn't mean I think they're "opportunist," or that working with them isn't valuable.

[sixdollarchampagne]

Let us drop the sectarianism, please.
I am an anarchist and I fully support any attempts to campaign by any sort of socialist party. It doesn't matter what theories you adhere to, they won't assure that there is enough food on the tables of the working poor, and the liberal democrats don't appear to give a shit beyond rhetoric.

With all due respect, there is a basic confusion in what G4b3n writes. Anarchism involves a rejection of electoral politics, so no anarchist could possibly say, "I fully support any attempts to campaign." The anarchist stance would be full opposition to any sort of election campaign.

[Art Vandelay]

From my experience, I would have to say that Dabrowski is right and Lenina is wrong. I followed the activities of the Sparts for some years, when I used to live near Boston, and I have never seen the Sparts act disruptively at a public meeting of any other tendency. What the Sparts and the IG did do, was to ask pointed questions that, quite correctly, exposed the opportunism of other groups on the left. That's not disruption; given that the fate of the working class is at stake, it would be irresponsible not to question the astonishing assertion by Socialist Alternative/CWI that cops and screws/prison guards are potential allies (!!) of working people (to take a random example), when there is a vast amount of historical experience showing just how false that CWI claim is. I have a close friend who is innocent of any knowledge of Marxism, yet, from his time living on the streets, he understands that cops are not on the side of labor, i.e., he has a better grasp of reality than the CWI does (and Trotsky himself was very clear that, when a worker joins the police, he ceases to be a proletarian and becomes a cop for the bourgeoisie).

To address Lenina's complaint that the Sparts criticize every other group on the left, it is instructive to remember how nearly the entire US left backed Obama's first presidential campaign (as well as constant support for the Democrats, a trait of the US left), which shows just how opportunist the "left" is, in this country.

And it is not sectarian to disagree with opportunist politics. There is no mass party of the working class in the US (only tiny groups, that are largely peripheral to the toiling masses), so sectarianism is not a possibility, despite what opportunists constantly claim.

I think the issue is that when it comes from to the sparts and other groups like them (at least in my opinion, based off of my limited interaction with them, as well as what I've heard from other radicals), is that their critiques don't come from the standpoint of comrades with differing opinions, like yours seems to (even if you didn't mean to come across that way), but rather as if all other leftist groups (due to relatively small, in the grand scheme of things and at this point of the class struggle, irrelevant theoretical differences) are as equally reactionary as your average capitalist. In all honesty, the only time I've had real life interaction with a spart, was at the anti-nato summit in Chicago of 2010, but he came off as not only ultra sectarian (and I considered myself an anarchist at this point, so this isn't a case of a trot just being sectarian towards another trot), but also just weird and a little crazy. I interacted with many political groups that weekend, but the only ones to comes off as odd as the sparts, were the RCP (for obvious reasons). On top of this, certain theoretical positions taken by the Sparticus League speak for themselves (ie: 'support the deformed workers state of the dprk's right to nuclear arms' or their troubling support of NAMBLA, however they choose to intellectualize it). Now the sparts are good on many theoretical issues and their history is one in which they haven't tailed reformist elements of the working class (especially since the fall of the USSR and the resulting low period of class consciousness). That being said, their orientation towards the rest of the left is indeed incredibly sectarian. They use differences in historical convictions (many of which hold little relevance to most modern political work), as well as their misreading of Trotsky (the deformed worker's state being implicit in Trotsky's DWS nonsense), to basically ignore orientating towards the working class and instead to spend their time forming reading groups and attacking other Trotskyist parties.

[Art Vandelay]

Ultimately, I won't know whether it would be a long term commitment until I've actually been a member for a while. I'm sure there are other things that I disagree with the party line on as well, but that doesn't mean I think they're "opportunist," or that working with them isn't valuable.

I completely with what you've said here. I'm certainly no 'party partriot' and don't pretend to agree completely with the CWI's line (I don't completely agree with any party's political line in totality and this reflects the current low period of class consciousness), but we are a democratic centralist party and that is one of the reasons why I haven't completely addressed this issue which has been brought up. Having said all of that, I do not think this is a theoretical stance, which would have any tangible effect on your actual political work in the U.S. I think the campaigns being run by CWI members in the states right now, speak for themselves and whatever leftist groups who want to snipe from the sidelines can simply look at who is attracting the support of workers (on a trotskyist and grass roots program) and are welcome to make whatever comments they want. Unfortunately ultra-leftism doesn't simply permeate into the politics of left-communists, but also certain trotskyist groups which use a proclaimed purity of political line, to justify their inactivity. Any attempt to actually approach the working class and fight for issues they are concerned about, is considered ineffective or reformist by those who suffer from the contagious infantile disorder.

Edit: For the record the sparts aren't ultra-leftists, their deformed workers state nonsense places them almost as far to the right as the stalinists.

[Creative Destruction]

I think the issue is that when it comes from to the sparts and other groups like them (at least in my opinion, based off of my limited interaction with them, as well as what I've heard from other radicals), is that their critiques don't come from the standpoint of comrades with differing opinions, like yours seems to (even if you didn't mean to come across that way), but rather as if all other leftist groups (due to relatively small, in the grand scheme of things and at this point of the class struggle, irrelevant theoretical differences) are as equally reactionary as your average capitalist. In all honesty, the only time I've had real life interaction with a spart, was at the anti-nato summit in Chicago of 2010, but he came off as not only ultra sectarian (and I considered myself an anarchist at this point, so this isn't a case of a trot just being sectarian towards another trot), but also just weird and a little crazy. I interacted with many political groups that weekend, but the only ones to comes off as odd as the sparts, were the RCP (for obvious reasons). On top of this, certain theoretical positions taken by the Sparticus League speak for themselves (ie: 'support the deformed workers state of the dprk's right to nuclear arms' or their troubling support of NAMBLA, however they choose to intellectualize it). Now the sparts are good on many theoretical issues and their history is one in which they haven't tailed reformist elements of the working class (especially since the fall of the USSR and the resulting low period of class consciousness). That being said, their orientation towards the rest of the left is indeed incredibly sectarian. They use differences in historical convictions (many of which hold little relevance to most modern political work), as well as their misreading of Trotsky (the deformed worker's state being implicit in Trotsky's DWS nonsense), to basically ignore orientating towards the working class and instead to spend their time forming reading groups and attacking other Trotskyist parties.

I haven't had any personal interaction with the Sparts, since they didn't exist in any substantial way where I lived and worked when I was involved in activist politics, but from the outside they sound like a cult.

[Five Year Plan]

How did a discussion about Socialist Alternative, and a person's contemplating whether or not to join it, morph into a discussion about nambla and whether the Spartacist (not Spartacus) League is a cult? Hold on. Now I remember. A supporter of a group that originated in a split with the SL mentioned the CWI's position on the police being proletarians. Here's hoping that one day the SL, the IG, and other sectarian Trotskyst groups could learn to be less sectarian by doing things like attack a group for having weird members and disagreeing too vehemently with people.

What's weird is that they are now being faulted for supporting the idea of deformed workers states. Doesn't the CWI also support the idea of deformed workers states?

[GiantMonkeyMan]

it would be irresponsible not to question the astonishing assertion by Socialist Alternative/CWI that cops and screws/prison guards are allies (!!) of working people (to take a random example), when there is a vast amount of historical experience showing just how false that CWI claim is.
This point that people always bring up seems to be massively cherry picking, though. In the UK the Socialist Party has heavily been involved in exposing the police involvement in the blacklisting scandal, in the Hillsborough disaster and their infiltration of Youth Against Racism in Europe and in practice we take a stance of never involving the police if we don't have to. There's never any sense that the police, as an organ of state control, is in any way an ally of the labour movement through the actions of the Socialist Party. Maybe there are some articles lacking in nuance and a bad theoretical understanding of the police as a part of the working class but in action there is very very little support for any aspect of the police if at all.

[Fourth Internationalist]

I've been a lurker of this forum for a while, but I was motivated to post when I attended a recent meeting of Socialist Alternative. They seem pretty genuinely revolutionary, and I'm thinking of joining, but I was wondering if anyone here is a member or has dealt with them. If so, what kind of experience did you have with them? Also, what do people think about their city council campaign in Seattle?

I tried to join them a while ago. They contacted me once, but then they never contacted back, kinda just leaving me with no further contact.

edit: On all my posts that IMG thing appears below my post for no reason sorry. Is it only I who can see it?
http://www.revleft.com/vb/data:image/gif,GIF89a%12%00%12%00%B3%00%00%FF%FF%FF%F7%F7%EF% CC%CC%CC%BD%BE%BD%99%99%99ZYZRUR%00%00%00%FE%01%02 %00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%0 0%00%00%00%00!%F9%04%04%14%00%FF%00%2C%00%00%00%00 %12%00%12%00%00%04X0%C8I%2B%1D8%EB%3D%E4%00%60(%8A %85%17%0AG*%8C%40%19%7C%00J%08%C4%B1%92%26z%C76%FE %02%07%C2%89v%F0%7Dz%C3b%C8u%14%82V5%23o%A7%13%19L %BCY-%25%7D%A6l%DF%D0%F5%C7%02%85%5B%D82%90%CBT%87%D8i7 %88Y%A8%DB%EFx%8B%DE%12%01%00%3B

[Blake's Baby]

No, it's really there. A big bit of image-code.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I tried to join them a while ago. They contacted me once, but then they never contacted back, kinda just leaving me with no further contact.
From my own experience with dealing with contacts, sometimes I've been lazy, sometimes I've forgotten and then sometimes I've had so much shit piled on me at work or trying to scrape together rent money or whatever that I've just not had the motivation to pretend to be all welcoming and shit in trying to get someone to come along to meetings or activity. This post just makes me feel guilty about the other people I've left waiting. D:

[Red Sun]

They contacted me once, but then they never contacted back, kinda just leaving me with no further contact.
That's a bummer. I guess in a way maybe I was kind of lucky that the local branch is so small, because it meant that they seemed pretty enthusiastic that someone was interested in joining and was actually already a socialist. How long ago did you contact them?

[Fourth Internationalist]

That's a bummer. I guess in a way maybe I was kind of lucky that the local branch is so small, because it meant that they seemed pretty enthusiastic that someone was interested in joining and was actually already a socialist. How long ago did you contact them?

Sometime over the summer, I think. They contacted me once, and I talked to someone from them, and then they never contacted me again.

[Red Sun]

That's weird. Do you know anything else about the branch in your area? I still don't really know how widespread the organization is, or how involved different branches are with local struggles.

[Five Year Plan]

That's weird. Do you know anything else about the branch in your area? I still don't really know how widespread the organization is, or how involved different branches are with local struggles.

The best way to get an answer to this question is to get involved with struggles in your area. It will give you a better understanding of what different groups are about on the ground than exchanging a few emails.

[Blake's Baby]

When I was an Anarchist, I was nearly thrown out of a group I was involved with for suggesting, at a time when it actually looked like the Police might strike (which is illegal in the UK), that instead of going to their demo and throwing rocks and them and trying to break up the demonstration, we should go and support their right to strike. Not, I hasten to add, because I think that they should have more resources for murdering people in cells or generally terrorising the population, but because, when push comes to shove, I want as many of them as possible baffled and wrong-footed about what we're up to. But maybe it wasn't such clever idea. No-one else took me up on it obviously, and obviously I wasn't going to go in support on my own.

Probably for the best, after all.