Largest Left Wing Party

[Eleutherios]

How do you define left?

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Well it highly depends on your definition of the Left. If you include reformist parties and have a rather wide definition of the Left then I guess it would be the Green Party.

[Sankara1983]

This web page gives estimates of membership and cadres for several groups.

Membership:

25,000: Green Party
9,000: Democratic Socialists of America
2,000: Black Radical Congress
2,000: Communist Party USA
1,200: Socialist Party USA
1,000: Industrial Workers of the World
500: Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
150: Socialist Alternative
100: League of Revolutionaries for a New America
100: Maoist Internationalist Movement
50: News and Letters

[Scars]

That website is very old and very inaccurate- they're not estimates, they're guesses.

Anyway, the IWW has roughly 2000 members, and it's growing.

MIM would have, at absolute maximum, 25 members.

The CPUSA would probably only have about 500, it's been nigh irrelivant since '56.

[Abood]

Not a single orthodox marxist party?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Actually the IWW has 2,500 according to recent reports.

Oh, and the CPUSA is the biggest "radical leftist" (yeah right) group in the US.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Sankara1983@Mar 22 2006, 11:53 PM
This web page gives estimates of membership and cadres for several groups.

Membership:

25,000: Green Party
9,000: Democratic Socialists of America
2,000: Black Radical Congress
2,000: Communist Party USA
1,200: Socialist Party USA
1,000: Industrial Workers of the World
500: Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
150: Socialist Alternative
100: League of Revolutionaries for a New America
100: Maoist Internationalist Movement
50: News and Letters

That's probably accurate as far as the top 4 or 5. After that it gets fuzzy; hard to reliably guess at things so small. They also leave out a number of organizations which are probably bigger than 150 members.

On the other hand, I'd be surprised if MiM or News&Letters have more than a dozen or so members. I've never met a member of either.

Then there's the issue of "what do you mean by a member"? DSA, for example, is less of an organization than a mailing list. The Black Radical Congress is more of an umbrella group, I think. But in some of the more radical parties, a member is a cadre, a highly dedicated activist.

**

If you ask about groups more radical than the CPUSA or the various social democrats: the larger ones probably include the International Socialists Organization, the Socialist Workers Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the Workers World Party.

That's alphabetical order - I'm not going to try to rank them, and I chose those four based on activity, influence, running into them more than an estimate of their membership lists.

All these groups are small, of course; even the DSA or the Greens.

[SmithSmith]

Why is the left so divided?

[rebelworker]

Beause we have very different ideas about how to change the world.

Some of us work on the same campaigns, but we need different organisations to represent our politics.

IWW was listed in the Wall Street Journal as having 2500 members last week.

NEFAC has about 100 dues paying members in the Northeast, our sister org in the northwest probably has less than half that.

Including supporter collectives in the great lakes area, San Diego and Atlanta and scattered individuals we probably got 200-250.

I heard the ISO has about 1000, but their turnover is o high that that is extreemly hard to judge, from my experience with their canadian equivilant that probably translates to about 250 cadre(almost exclusivly students) 4-500 semiactive or turnover members and 2-300 names on lists that arnt really interested or inactive for a long time.

I think the RCP probably has about 2-400 members, but thats just a guess from what I know about a few regions. in general a handfull of older crazies with a large new influx of very young people.

SWP at between 150-250 is a bit more serrious and based in workplace organizing. Much older and experienced average membership than ISO or RCP, but on the way out.

WWP is probbly a bit bigger than the SWP, know for their high profile front groups, something the RCP would love to duplicate. My impression is that they dont talk alot about their realpolitics though, its all in the secretly leading about the masses for them.

[SmithSmith]

Originally posted by rebelworker@Mar 23 2006, 01:56 PM
Beause we have very different ideas about how to change the world.

Some of us work on the same campaigns, but we need different organisations to represent our politics.

But this is why the 18/19 century communists, socialists, and anarchists lost. The were too busy fighting each other while the Right took advantage and conquered.

[TC]

Although they don't conceptualize themselves as 'partys' PETA and Green Peace are probably the largest in terms of both money and members on the left. The ACLU while technically a liberal organization is often in effect a leftist organization and they are probably even better funded and organized. The National lawyers Guild is leftist and probably fairly large given that it has a ton of indepdent lawyers everywhere.


As for the radical marxist left, i think the WWP and their factions and front groups and the Revolutionary Communist Party are probably by far the largest in terms of the numbers of activists they can get on the streets and they seem to have the largest 'presence' so to speak...but in terms of actual committed cadre members, maybe the Sparticus League and ISO have a similar amount...and when it comes to people who affiliate themselves the CPUSA is probably quite 'large' except in that, while the WWP party commands many more activists than it has members, the CPUSA has far fewer activists then it has members as most of its members are entirely passive supporters.

In any case thats my educated guess having been to dozens of demonstrations on the US east coast...it might be different in the west coast and mid west.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

As for the radical marxist left, i think the WWP and their factions and front groups and the Revolutionary Communist Party are probably by far the largest in terms of the numbers of activists they can get on the streets and they seem to have the largest 'presence' so to speak...but in terms of actual committed cadre members, maybe the Sparticus League and ISO have a similar amount...and when it comes to people who affiliate themselves the CPUSA is probably quite 'large' except in that, while the WWP party commands many more activists than it has members, the CPUSA has far fewer activists then it has members as most of its members are entirely passive supporters.

No fucking way are the Sparts anywhere near the size of the RCP or ISO. The ISO has around 1,000 members, and the Sparts are smaller than the SWP which only has a few hundred members left.

[вор в законе]

Why is the left so divided?

Dogmatism.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Originally posted by Red Brigade@Mar 23 2006, 10:58 PM

Why is the left so divided?

Dogmatism.

This is a little too simple of an answer. I think when groups or coalitions split, there are generally two different reasons:

1) Splits happen because of objective events which cause real differences in ideas of how to progress.

The Russian revolution had this effect and the left was divided in supporting the Bolsheviks or not.

I think what we have seen since the 90s has been the aftermath of the end of the soviet union. There is a political reallignment and reassesment because of a world event. I think that with the collapse of the USSR and the movement toward more overt capitalist forms in Maoist countries means it is no accident that Stalinist and Maoist groups have been on the decline while Anarchists and Trot groups have been growing larger in the 90s.

2) Splits happen when movements are in a downturn. This can be sectarian in nature... on faction blames another for the decline. I guess it depends on where you stand if you think a sectarian split is healthy or not.

During the anti-globalization movment, many marxist and anarchist groups had been working together in coalitions and, in my experience, in the downturn after 9/11, things got really bitter between radicals and groups who had worked together with much less friction when the movement was still growing.

In anti-afganistan-war coalitions I was in anarchists were blaming socialists and other anarchists for the decline and liberals were red-baiting all radicals and saying that the movement's decline was because radicals wern't patriotic enough and we scaring people off.

[Scars]

Originally posted by CompañeroDeLibertad@Mar 23 2006, 07:50 AM
Actually the IWW has 2,500 according to recent reports.

Oh, and the CPUSA is the biggest "radical leftist" (yeah right) group in the US.

Is that word-wide or in that states? Because if it's the states it means that there's been a 25% increase in membership in only a year or so!

I think part of the reason the left is so splintered is because the unwillingness to comprimise and, generally, the unwillingness to have internal 'factions'. Thus whenever somthing 'big' happens, for instance Yugoslavia or Kosovo, isntead of there being two or three internal factions that will disagree with one another over that issue, but will still agree with the base platform of the party, its methods, its goals etc they'll split into two parties who proclaim, more or less, the same things but will bitterly oppose one another. The best example of this would be the Trotskites (Trotskyists? Trotskyiteists?), you could easily form 90% of the parties into one big, united party- but there is so much bad blood between them (mainly because most of them are historically 'related' to one another) that this will never happen.

The PLP have also grown since the beginning of the 'War on Terror' from about 200 members to about 500-ish. In addition they have a wider racial diversity than many leftist parties of North America, which are almost all 95% white.

[amanondeathrow]

The PLP have also grown since the beginning of the 'War on Terror' from about 200 members to about 500-ish. In addition they have a wider racial diversity than many leftist parties of North America, which are almost all 95% white.

Do you have a source for this?

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

The ISO and the RCP are bigger than those estimates I think, both growing significantly in the recent past. I would peg the ISO at 2,000+ (although they have a very high turnover rate as has been said) and the RCP at about 1,000. I highly doubt the Spartacists have more than 150 members nationwide. The estimates for the WWP also seem to be a bit high, they have a very high presence on the left because of their front groups and organized protests, but their numbers are lower than people think I suspect. The list also omits the recent group that broke-off from the WWP, the Party of Socialism and Liberation which has grown considerably. Regardless, I would say that there are probably more people who consider themselves Marxist or Anarchist and are unaffiliated or anti-authoritarian than these numbers suggest.

[Scars]

Originally posted by Dee's Nuts@Mar 23 2006, 11:45 PM

The PLP have also grown since the beginning of the 'War on Terror' from about 200 members to about 500-ish. In addition they have a wider racial diversity than many leftist parties of North America, which are almost all 95% white.

Do you have a source for this?

Several PLP members and associates that I've talked to.