Anti-democratic ISO secretly kept afloat by rich donors

[RosasGhost]

Via SpeciesAndClass dot com

Anti-democratic ISO secretly kept afloat by rich donors
By Jon Hochschartner
While the information has been publicly available for some time, current members of the International Socialist organization, recent ex-members, and outside critics generally seem unaware that the ISO is apparently kept afloat by the donations of a few wealthy individuals. To be clear, I see nothing wrong with the donations themselves. The problem is that the ISO leadership, 'elected' by an anti-democratic slate system, has kept these contributions secret from their membership, allowing rank-and-file activists no control, or even oversight, of the funds.

I recently stumbled across this information while perusing the Wikipedia 'Talk' page for the entry on the ISO. While admittedly a minor example, the discussion there is a microcosm of the relationship of the ISO, an organization which touts its close relationship to Glenn Greenwald, toward transparency and criticism. In the comments, one can see ISO leaders, operating under their own names, engaging in what amounts to a petty edit war, manipulating Wikipedia policy to keep any information that might negatively reflect on their organization from appearing in the entry.

Wading through this morass, I came across a link to an old revision of the page, as edited by a contributor named Justin. This entry stated that the ISO's 501(c)(3), the Center for Economic Research and Social Change (CERSC), received over $1.2 million in stock from one Kevin Neel, according to IRS forms filed in 2001. "The stock acquired by the Center is in Oracle Database and Phillip Morris," the old revision stated. "The Center has been selling off portions of this stock every year to fund its payroll. In 2006 alone, payments in the amount of $470,700 were made to various party organizers in the form of salaries and benefits."

According to files available on the National Center for Charitable Statistics website, this appears to be accurate. Further, in that same year, the ISO received a $176,000 contribution from one Jason Yanowitz. On social media, I brought this to the attention of Critical Left Revival, a Facebook group made up of many ex-members of the ISO. While one commenter appeared aware of Neel's contribution, the majority clearly did not. One commenter said he found the revelation particularly disturbing because he had actually been in a leadership position in the ISO at the time and had not heard the slightest whisper about the windfall donation.

Some ex-members I spoke to about Neel's donation, despite their criticism of the ISO, didn't see what the big deal was. Isn't donating money toward a socialist group, they asked, exactly what one should hope the rich would do? By all accounts, these ex-members said, Neel was a great guy and there was no reason to believe he used his donation to exert any kind of unfair influence over the ISO. But these sorts of questions and comments missed the point. Again, the problem was not the donations themselves. Their have been admirable traitors to the ruling class among the ranks of the socialist movement since its inception. Karl Marx himself was financially supported by his mill-owning collaborator Friedrich Engels. The problem was that the ISO membership had no control or oversight of the money. Most of them didn't even know the donations had been received.

One current member had a different response to learning of Neel's donation. He suggested that it was understandable that a group such as the ISO, which advocates the overthrow of the capitalist government, would not want its financial information made public, due to the possibility of state repression. First, it should be pointed out that given the sect's size, it seems like delusional self-aggrandizement on the part of the ISO to believe the Federal Bureau of Investigation takes much interest in them. But more importantly, all of this financial information is already available to the government in the form of IRS forms. If the capitalist state really wanted to waste its time investigating what amounts to a Russian Revolution reenactment club, there's nothing barring it from doing so, without employing the technologically advanced means used by organizations such as the National Security Agency. After all, this information is publicly available. So if the ISO leadership isn't trying to hide its finances from the government, who are they trying to hide the information from? One must assume their members.

About a year ago, I wrote a piece for CounterPunch in which I held out hope the ISO might reform itself. Since that time, we have witnessed a brutal faction fight within the organization, which ended with the expulsion of those members who asked for a basic degree of transparency and accountability. My outlook on the group has hardened over this period. I now believe that the ISO leadership has a material stake, in the form of their paid positions, against reform in the organization. Change will be impossible so long as they remain at the helm, in practice answerable to no one. They are an impediment to the democratic and ideologically-broad socialist organization we so desperately need.

SpeciesAndClass dot com

[Deep Sea]

Isn't donating money toward a socialist group, they asked, exactly what one should hope the rich would do?

What Would Lenin Say?


It goes without saying that, out of this tidy sum, at least five hundred millions can be spent as a sop to the labour leaders and the labour aristocracy, i.e., on all sorts of bribes. The whole thing boils down to nothing but bribery. It is done in a thousand different ways: by increasing cultural facilities in the largest centres, by creating educational institutions, and by providing co-operative, trade union and parliamentary leaders with thousands of cushy jobs. This is done wherever present-day civilised capitalist relations exist. It is these thousands of millions in super-profits that form the economic basis of opportunism in the working-class movement. In America, Britain and France we see a far greater persistence of the opportunist leaders, of the upper crust of the working class, the labour aristocracy; they offer stronger resistance to the Communist movement. That is why we must be prepared to find it harder for the European and American workers’ parties to get rid of this disease than was the case in our country. We know that enormous successes have been achieved in the treatment of this disease since the Third International was formed, but we have not yet finished the job; the purg- ing of the workers’ parties, the revolutionary parties of the proletariat all over the world, of bourgeois influences, of the opportunists in their ranks, is very far from complete

[khad]

Can you please refrain from posting articles straight up without any context or commentary? A few times is all right, but this is getting a bit tiresome.

These kinds of exposes on the ISO have even been done better by posters on this forum.

[Per Levy]

What Would Lenin Say?

not much since lenin is quite dead for some time.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Moved to Politics from Practice and Propaganda.

[sixdollarchampagne]

I occasionally attended ISO forums when I lived in New England. The ISO comes across as a very well-behaved group of nicely groomed, prosperous young people, who attend very good schools, like Brown. From what I've seen of the ISO, there is absolutely no danger of its becoming a "Russian revolution re-enactment club." Such a move would be an enormous step forward for the ISO and totally out of character.

When I think about the ISO, I am reminded of the SWP in the 1960's, when they were the "responsible" face of the left, during a very turbulent time. The SWP spent a lot of effort organizing coalitions with Democrats for very worthy causes, like opposing the war in Viet Nam. It is just that's all the SWP was capable of, legal activity that in no way challenged bourgeois rule, a tendency deeply invested in its ongoing cooperation with one of the ruling bourgeois parties, to organize "peaceful, legal, massive" demonstrations. When Nixon was in the White House, I'm sure the Democrats were very grateful for the antiwar demonstrations that the SWP helped build.

And, observing the ISO in New England, I often thought that they must have studied the history of the SWP's involvement in the 1960's antiwar movement. One thing I remember, when a local politician in Rhode Island went on a junket to Honduras, a "fact-finding mission," one of the ISO'ers in town accompanied that bourgeois pol, as his volunteer publicist.

The ruling class had nothing to fear from the SWP, and it has absolutely nothing to fear from the pleasant bourgeois youth of the ISO.

[Krasnyymir]

With the amount of factionalism there is among US Marxists and Socialists, one could certainly understand why they wanted to keep their finances private.

Or perhaps donors wanted anonymity as much as it's possible.

While transparency is essential for organizations that use consensus in the decision making process, ISO, to put it mildly, has a different structure.