Single membership?

[SocialistinKY]

New here, so sorry if this is a dumb question or has already been answered elsewhere. I've been talking lately with member organizers of a particular left party here in America that is looking to start a chapter where I live. I was alarmed to learn, however, that they do not allow membership in parties or organizations other than their own. I used the term "single membership" above because I don't know what to call it, but it have a few questions:

Why do organizations do this?

And what are the arguments for and against it?

There are other apparent ideological tests one must pass to join which I also find a touch disturbing. Thanks for your input!

[BIXX]

There are other apparent ideological tests one must pass to join which I also find a touch disturbing. Thanks for your input!


Out of curiosity what are those "tests"?

Also, if that is what the organization is doing if say avoid the shit out of them.

[Sinister Intents]

I'm not sure why this is done, but I suppose it's because some parties clash or disagree, perhaps because they're in direct competition like businesses in capitalism.

Not sure what to say, and there is no such thing as a stupid question. If I missed the point could you elaborate on what you mean?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Yeah what are the tests they want you to do

[Dagoth Ur]

Lot's of US parties are at each other's throats most of the time so many (if not most) are suspicious of "spies" from rival parties with basically all new members. It would be totally ridiculous if these tiny parties weren't in fact sending spies at each other. It's pretty easy to fly under the radar as a party member if you aren't a public activist of said party or make a big deal about being a member of that party.

As for the tests they're probably just trying to gauge your knowledge level/your capability as an informed activist. At least I would hope so.

What org are you talking about?

[blake 3:17]

New here, so sorry if this is a dumb question or has already been answered elsewhere. I've been talking lately with member organizers of a particular left party here in America that is looking to start a chapter where I live. I was alarmed to learn, however, that they do not allow membership in parties or organizations other than their own. I used the term "single membership" above because I don't know what to call it, but it have a few questions:

Why do organizations do this?

And what are the arguments for and against it?

There are other apparent ideological tests one must pass to join which I also find a touch disturbing. Thanks for your input!

Usually organizations refer to allowing or disallowing dual memberships, usually in reference to specific other parties.

[SocialistinKY]

The "tests" basically boiled down to reading certain texts and discussing them with an organizer and/or other members to gauge your knowledge/commitment level I guess. The group is aligned with a specific tendency (which I only later learned) and has been known to engage in "you [insert name of other party here] are not REAL socialists" type of talk. But this study and discussion was a prerequisite to membership. It felt like a job interview. I've never seen such a high threshold to giving an organization my money! It's such a shame that there's so much competition within the left just like between corporate businesses. I'd rather not say the org's name but suffice to say they're pretty high-profile these days and branching out.

[BIXX]

Ew, salt?

[The Feral Underclass]

This is the Sparts, isn't it?

[Leftsolidarity]

Sounds rather normal for a Leninist organization to not allow members to belong to another party. That doesn't always mean that members can't (because they really should) be involved in mass organizations. As I don't know what organization you're referring too I can't really give more thoughts on it.

It seems you're also describing a form of what is called in WWP, a 'candidacy', which is also fairly typical. For us, it's a time when you basically go through an intense ideological and organizational training process. It helps parties make sure their cadre are fit for their party duties and are confident in themselves.

[BIXX]

This is the Sparts, isn't it?


I'm just gonna keep guessing til I get it right.

[Sinister Intents]

This is the Sparts, isn't it?

Who are the Sparts?

[Zukunftsmusik]

trotskyists on speed

[Lord Testicles]

Who are the Sparts?

International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Communist_League_%28Fourth_Internati onalist%29)

[The Feral Underclass]

I know they have/used to have an entrance exam.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sinister Intents]

trotskyists on speed


International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Communist_League_%28Fourth_Internati onalist%29)

Oh...

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

It does sound like the Sparts. They spend more time criticizing other socialists for not being "real socialists" than they seem to do organizing the working class, and they also ask a lot from their members.

[Q]

New here, so sorry if this is a dumb question or has already been answered elsewhere. I've been talking lately with member organizers of a particular left party here in America that is looking to start a chapter where I live. I was alarmed to learn, however, that they do not allow membership in parties or organizations other than their own. I used the term "single membership" above because I don't know what to call it, but it have a few questions:

Why do organizations do this?

And what are the arguments for and against it?

There are other apparent ideological tests one must pass to join which I also find a touch disturbing. Thanks for your input!
It's a loyalty thing. It's what sects usually do. They find influences from the outside a threat and therefore dual-/multi-membership itself is a threat.

Ideological tests? Sounds like either the International Communist Current, which are big on agreement of their "platform" (a rather big set of texts (http://en.internationalism.org/platform)), or perhaps the World Socialist Movement, which actually are in the habit of holding entrance exams. Or it could be any of the Trotskyist sects. In any case, I think it is a red flag (the bad kind) of the type of group you're getting into and I would rather recommend to stay away from it or, if that is not an option, stay loosely connected. You will find that you can work just fine with multiple organisations if you are not a member of any (read: they all will try to recruit you).

Incidentally, the Dutch SP is the only party of any size (~45 000 members) I know of that still has this kind of ruling in their constitution. It is undoubtedly an inheritance of former times (they came from a Maoist past in the 1960's) and used against me to be expelled from it back in 2009.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

it's pathetic. I'd tell them to go fuck themselves personally. I thought socialism fought against access to resources based on means-testing/academic prowess.

I fight every day for a semblance of integrity in an education system whose obsession with testing and grades is designed not for students, professors or the academy but so employers can screen potential employees To see 'left' organisations consciously mimicking this bourgeois structure is irritating to put it mildly.

[Rugged Collectivist]

...

[Blake's Baby]

OK, why would you want to join an organisation, if you didn't agree with the aims and objectives of the organisation?

Why would they want to let you in, if you don't agree with the aims and objectives?

Why should they let you in, if you're a member of a different organisation? Like it or not, they are 'rivals' either in a capitalist sense (they're trying to take your money - though if you're complaining that they're making it too hard to give them your money that's probably not the reason, you could just go and join some group that's happy to use you as a paper-seller with no real agreement or even discussion and burn you out in 2 years instead), or they're rivals in the sense that they have competing outlooks on what the working class needs to do in the current situation - each thinking the other is wrong, and potentially harmful to the working class. Why would any political organisation be happy about you being a member of another organisation that it considers harmful?

If you don't like it, don't join. It's not hard. They don't owe you anything, they don't have to accommodate you.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

OK, why would you want to join an organisation, if you didn't agree with the aims and objectives of the organisation?

You wouldn't.


Why would they want to let you in, if you don't agree with the aims and objectives?

Because the role of communists, including communists in organised parties, is not to find all the class conscious communists who are already adherents of some specified tendency, but to help raise the conscious of the class as a whole.

The approach that they should only let you in to their little club if you agree with their tendency effectively signposts that said communist party is for wannabe-theorists and not for workers who have not reached a certain level of political consciousness yet.


Why should they let you in, if you're a member of a different organisation?

Because not every organisation wants to become the sole brand of the left. Some of us, y'know, want to work with other people, groups, and organisations. I thought socialism was about comradeship not competition?


Why would any political organisation be happy about you being a member of another organisation that it considers harmful?

This is such a bourgeois fucking attitude.


If you don't like it, don't join. It's not hard. They don't owe you anything, they don't have to accommodate you.

If it is such a hardship for a communist party to have to accomodate workers of diverse political stripes, then I think they should really question whether they are anything more than another irrelevant sect that isn't interested in participating in the class struggle in reality.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Democratic centralism makes a party into a pseudo military organization in terms of hierarchy with the added touch of democratic decision making at various levels. A healthy application of democratic centralism is the ability to correctly move towards more open debate and collective decision making or in times of crisis, to quick top down command system.

Because of that being a member of multiple party organizations can cause conflicts of interest and so on. Coalitions and mass orgs are meant to be democratic organizations of various types of organizations to work together through.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

New here, so sorry if this is a dumb question or has already been answered elsewhere. I've been talking lately with member organizers of a particular left party here in America that is looking to start a chapter where I live. I was alarmed to learn, however, that they do not allow membership in parties or organizations other than their own. I used the term "single membership" above because I don't know what to call it, but it have a few questions:

Why do organizations do this?

And what are the arguments for and against it?

There are other apparent ideological tests one must pass to join which I also find a touch disturbing. Thanks for your input!

Are you sure you're not joining a fraternity?

Jk, I remember when I joined the IWW, I had to memorize every Wobbly song backwards and while singing all of those at once backwards I had to sacrifice my first born in the name of dark lord Satan.

[Blake's Baby]

You wouldn't.



Because the role of communists, including communists in organised parties, is not to find all the class conscious communists who are already adherents of some specified tendency, but to help raise the conscious of the class as a whole.

The approach that they should only let you in to their little club if you agree with their tendency effectively signposts that said communist party is for wannabe-theorists and not for workers who have not reached a certain level of political consciousness yet.



Because not every organisation wants to become the sole brand of the left. Some of us, y'know, want to work with other people, groups, and organisations. I thought socialism was about comradeship not competition?



This is such a bourgeois fucking attitude.



If it is such a hardship for a communist party to have to accomodate workers of diverse political stripes, then I think they should really question whether they are anything more than another irrelevant sect that isn't interested in participating in the class struggle in reality.

A communist organisation isn't an encounter group. It doesn't exist to make its militants feel good about their place in the world. Why would a communist organisation want non-communists in it, people with politics that it considers to be harmful to goal of the self-emancipation of the working class?

Of course a political organisation is not 'for workers who have not reached a certain level of consciousness'. The point about the organisation's activity isn't that everyone joins and then we brainwash them. Obviously people should understand what they're doing before they join an organisation. If they don't know what they're doing, they really shouldn't join, much as I shouldn't be allowed to captain a submarine as I have no idea what I'm doing.

I really don't understand what you think the point of a political organisation is. It's not a random political fuck-fest.

[Thirsty Crow]

It's a loyalty thing. It's what sects usually do. They find influences from the outside a threat and therefore dual-/multi-membership itself is a threat.

Ideological tests? Sounds like either the International Communist Current, which are big on agreement of their "platform" (a rather big set of texts (http://en.internationalism.org/platform)), or
Judging from both personal experience and knowledge about the users' locality, no way it is the ICC since a) there is no fast growing a prominent US section and b) while you're right that a high degree of agreement with platform (and actually much more than platform) is required, there are no actual "tests" one could speak of.

[Blake's Baby]

Though the 'seem to be very bad at wanting to take my money off me' could be the ICC.

I've known them 15 years and they've only once broached the subject of me possibly even discussing the start of the process that might lead to membership.

The fact that they don't take impressionable people and get them to sign up to hand over loads of money straight away without any real political agreement is shocking, shocking I tell you.

[The Idler]

Try a few, pick one, join one. I don't see what the problem is. As for them first checking if you agree, if you're expected to make policy on the same level as everyone else once you're in, it makes sense. If you're not making policy, you shouldn't be 'taking tests'.

[Blake's Baby]

If you're not making policy, why would you want to join? It's fantastically unlikely that a group of people you found accidentally by reading a newspaper sold by a student at a demo will already have had every political thought you will want to have.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

trotskyists on speed

Accept no substitutes.

Anyway, apologies for posting in a slightly old thread, but if the group in question is the SL/US, or a section of the ICL in general, the "test" will most likely consist of someone from the group having a short chat with you about the ICL programme, about your comprehension of certain foundational documents (mostly the declaration of principles, nothing too fancy), and so on. I found it a pleasant experience. Absolute agreement is not necessary, and in fact would cause concern according to the people I've spoken to.

And really, if you don't know what the group is fighting for, why join? Political groups are fighting propaganda organisations, and members are supposed to do their part - it might not be a lot, but you do have to know what you stand for and what you want. Likewise dual membership - I mean, take something as basic as Hungary in 1956. The SL calls it an incipient political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy. The WWP calls it a bourgeois nationalist counter-revolution. If you were to join both the SL and the WWP, what would you do, change your line on Hungary depending on whether you're closer to the Spartacist or Workers' World public office?

[Art Vandelay]

Accept no substitutes.

Anyway, apologies for posting in a slightly old thread, but if the group in question is the SL/US, or a section of the ICL in general, the "test" will most likely consist of someone from the group having a short chat with you about the ICL programme, about your comprehension of certain foundational documents (mostly the declaration of principles, nothing too fancy), and so on. I found it a pleasant experience. Absolute agreement is not necessary, and in fact would cause concern according to the people I've spoken to.

And really, if you don't know what the group is fighting for, why join? Political groups are fighting propaganda organisations, and members are supposed to do their part - it might not be a lot, but you do have to know what you stand for and what you want. Likewise dual membership - I mean, take something as basic as Hungary in 1956. The SL calls it an incipient political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy. The WWP calls it a bourgeois nationalist counter-revolution. If you were to join both the SL and the WWP, what would you do, change your line on Hungary depending on whether you're closer to the Spartacist or Workers' World public office?

With the Trotskyist League of Canada (the ICL section here) I've had a similar experience, although it has also included going through some works of Lenin/Trotsky and discussing them. Which is something I've quite enjoyed.