The ISO and the Kshama Sawant Campaign.

Sawant and Socialist Alternative are also forming a broad electoral alliance with other left-wing forces to use this result as a launching pad for a far bigger challenge to the Democratic Party. Concretely, Socialist Alternative is organizing for 2013 a slate of independent left-wing candidates to run for mayor and for all the open city council seats, all of which are currently held by Democrats. “We will go after them!” Sawant declared to huge applause of excited supporters on election night.

Election night also saw mass celebrations in the streets of Seattle after the passage of Referendum 74 for marriage equality and the defeat of Mitt Romney. Sawant addressed a crowd of over 2,000 people, saying “If you think that the Democratic Party politicians did this for you, let me tell you it was us that won this! The fight for LGBT rights has just begun – we still need to fight poverty, homelessness, and workplace discrimination!”

Again, why not ISO?

An issue is that the ISO, which has a large presence in Seattle and is the largest socialist organisation in the US today, refused to support Kshama Sawant even after being explicitly asked for their support.The campaign was not even mention in the ISO paper, Socialist Worker, which normally has a very thorough coverage of movement activities.The ISO initially even refused to acknowledge our request.

I mean this as a respectful question, my intention is not sectarian bashing.

the ISO seeming to see the "left" in the US and socialism essentially being themselves.

If Occupy had ran a bunch of slates of protest candidates with an oppositional stance to the Democrats, then I think that would be more like an organic rallying point for broader pools of class anger out there and I think that would be something that all sorts of radicals should support and a way for the Occupy movement itself to grow and develop and articulate it's grievances.

We are republishing below a letter from the International Socialist Organization (ISO) to Socialist Alternative (SA) regarding our request, and their refusal, to endorse our candidate, Kshama Sawant, who was challenging the most powerful legislator in Washington state, Democratic Speaker of the House Frank Chopp. Running as a Socialist Alternative candidate, Kshama Sawant received 29% and over 20,000 votes in her Seattle district.



This historic result demonstrated the significant vacuum to the left of the Democrats for working-class forces and the left. With Obama’s re-election and major struggles of workers and young people on the agenda, this space will grow substantially in the coming period. In Seattle and nationally, Socialist Alternative is approaching groups and individuals on the left to discuss the pressing need to work together to run independent left and working-class candidates in the 2013 elections and beyond to help prepare the way for a broad political party of workers and young people.

Starting in July 2012, we approached leading Seattle ISO members on a number of occasions asking for their endorsement of the Sawant campaign and inviting discussion. After these requests were ignored, we sent two emails in October to the Seattle and national ISO asking if they would support the Sawant campaign. Their reply, printed below, outlines their reasons for not doing so.

These issues have also been publicly debated on The North Star blog, where ISO supporters repeat the arguments made in their letter to us. We believe the issues raised in this debate are politically important if the potential for socialists to rapidly grow in the new situation opening up in the U.S. is to be realized. Discussion and debate on the left, if done in an honest and constructive manner, can help clarify important political issues regarding analysis, strategy, and tactics to most effectively build the workers’ movement. In this light, we decided to more fully explain our views in response to the points raised by the ISO.

However, when we approached leading Seattle ISO members about the potential for the Sawant campaign to strike a blow against the Democrats and help open up the space for broader left-wing political challenges in Seattle and asked for their support, they were not willing to seriously discuss it. In October, we wrote emails to the Seattle and National ISO again asking if they would support the Sawant campaign and work with us to stimulate a debate on the need to break with the Democrats in Seattle’s labor movement.

It's just the ISO showing some principles, if only for accidental, sectarian reasons.

I am a member of the ISO in Seattle. I and several members of the ISO here were ”approached” by SA members to endorse Sawant. What was this ”approach”? When a member of theirs happened to run into one of us , they would ask ”Are you going to endorse the Sawant campaign?” There was never even an email or phone call to say ”Can we set up a meeting to talk about why you should endorse the Sawant campaign?”. This is a common practice of SA. They imply that they are involved in trying to set up a broad campaign of some sort. In reality, all the details have been worked out by them in advance. After that, they try to get others on the left to endorse their initiative and imply that they are sectarian if they don’t.

I always got the impression that the real reason for the question was to be able to ”expose” the ISO as being sectarian if we didn’t endorse the SA campaign. I believe that the SA article is another example of this. If they had been serious about getting an ISO endorsement, they would have made a proposal to the ISO. Those supporting the Sawant campaign could argue that it shouldn’t take a formal proposal. However, if an endorsement is wanted and the potential endorser is reluctant, and you are really serious , you will make the effort. In fact, there was never a serious proposal to the ISO until the letter to our national steering committee, which was too close to the election to even consider. SA should know that the ISO is a NATIONAL organization. A serious proposal should be sent to the ISO national office, not just to a local branch.

SA rarely is involved in legitimate coalition building—i.e. trying to build a broad meeting around an issue and leaving it up to those participating to shape the coalition democratically. So why didn’t the ISO endorse?—the letter from our National Steering Committee explains it well. There are other reasons as well: In spite of its protestation to the contrary, SA has an electoralist orientation. In the abstract, there is no reason not to be engaged in struggle AND in elections. However , in the concrete reality of a small revolutionary left today, engaging seriously in an election pulls necessary resources away from struggle. As Engels said ”One real step forward in the movement is worth a thousand programs”.

SA during the Fall spent virtually all its resources on the election, and therefore put virtually no work into movement struggles, except to show up at rallies to promote the Sawant campaign. The Seattle ISO was engaged in several important struggles , which we felt were more important than any election campaign. We decided to prioritize those. Given our perspective on the election, an endorsement would have been only on paper. The role of elections in building for socialist revolution is a long and important discussion. In short, struggle , especially class struggle is the basis of winning reforms as well as building in the long run for revolution.

Elections can aid in the struggle —but our relation to elections must always be based on an assessment of how they will impact struggle. This assessment must always be concrete, and not just based on abstract principles. To dismiss the ISO position on the Sawant campaign as silly or sectarian etc. ignores this theoretically important question. Just as importantly, it ignores the important concrete application of the general principles of socialists and elections. Given the weakness of left-wing struggle in the U.S. today, the priority of socialists today should be on building actual struggle on the ground. The electoral expressions of that struggle need to be seen as just that—-not a substitute for the struggle itself.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Shaun Harkin
Date: Nov 1, 2012 11:47 AM
Subject: Response to Endorsement Request for Sawant Election Campaign
To: Patrick Ayers
Cc: <[email protected]>
Dear Patrick (SA National CCed)

This is to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence dated October 15th (and now a follow-up letter we have just received dated October 29th).

ISO members, as you know, won’t be voting for Democratic Party candidates in any election and are encouraged to vote for genuine ant-corporate third party alternatives.

This year, typically, there are many small socialist organizations who are running election candidates that we are aware of: SA, PSL, SWP, SEP, FSP, SP etc. All of whom are requesting support on the basis that they represent the alternative to the two-corporate parties. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases these campaigns are geared towards straightforward party-building, have an exceptional weak social base and have little connection to the creation of a genuine broader left alternative based on collaboration.

In fact, SA’s website offers up an analysis of the 2012 that critiques other alternative candidates such as Jill Stein of the Green Party for not having enough of a base in social movements and the working class. This makes one wonder as to SA’s conception of itself and the sounding board it draws upon for insight.

The ISO is interested in genuine collaboration amongst left and progressive organizations and forces. As case in point here are several examples on the electoral front your organization would be familiar with: we were active supporters of the effort to build and launch the Labor Party in the US in the 1990s; we actively supported and campaigned for Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo in their campaigns in 2000 and 2004; we were part of a broad coalition of left organizations supporting Dan La Botz as Ohio’s Socialist Party candidate for US Senate in 2010; we spearheaded the organization of a broad Socialist Contingent at the 2009 AFL-CIO sponsored rally in Washington, DC in which Socialist Alternative participated.

An email sent two weeks before an election to the national leadership of the ISO, and not even directly, is not a serious effort at collaboration. You and SA’s elected leadership, as a national organization and part of an international tendency, would and should know this quite well. It’s not even a gesture in such a direction. In fact, we know of no occasions when SA members, national or otherwise, have contacted the ISO’s national leadership to discuss collaboration in any electoral or social struggle effort. This kind of nonconstructive behaviour serves to reinforce rather than overcome sectarianism which is of benefit to no one.

Signed.
Shaun Harkin
For ISO Steering Committee

I always got the impression that the real reason for the question was to be able to ”expose” the ISO as being sectarian if we didn’t endorse the SA campaign. I believe that the SA article is another example of this. If they had been serious about getting an ISO endorsement, they would have made a proposal to the ISO

Why don't you just quit Socialist Alternative and join ISO?

So the CWI is upset that the ISO wouldn't help build one of its own branches and participate in their annual ritual of participating unions? Cry me a river. I don't particularly like the ISO, but out of all the things happening in the Pacific Northwest a campaign for a state representative (it wasn't even a federal level election) for a candidate, who ran on a pretty vague and populist platform and in the end couldn't pull off anything near 50% of the vote despite their being no republican challenger, is probably the least interesting thing out there. But you know we must participate in every single election we can because our moralizing and ineffectiveness will spread socialism. Let's just try and build our party and try to get everyone to follow us. Any socialist group who fails to help us in our party building rituals is sectarian!

29% for a socialist candidate is a big deal, ottoraptor.

The issue is that the ISO responded to SA in a hostile manner out of paranoia (see last paragraph in their letter) which showed their condescending attitude and dismissiveness of other groups. Instead of being so damned mean and competitive (THE ISO's MO), they could have just thanked SA for the letter, but politely said that they were not focusing on electoral politics this year. That way, if the SA made an issue out of it, SA would look foolish, but that is not what occurred. The SA looks good in al of this because of the way the ISO responded to this. This blew up and the ISO, as others have pointed out, have egg on their faces and did this to themselves and have showed themselves for the sectarians that they are.

And their articles in SW takes the same, condescending, dismissive tone, and even more importantly, is full of holes big enough to drive a fleet of 747s through.