RE: AUT: RE: antiwar movement

[".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thiago:

: When I look at that closely, I see
: people scheming and operating in a
: political element that is every bit as
: ordered and hierarchy-inducing as the
: maligned organizations. Worse, in fact,
: since the whole thing is informal
: and far more fluid, and so capable of
: avoiding any of the criticisms which
: are so pointlessly easy to level
: against some party.


The critique of informal hierarchies is a handy
cliche. True but a cliche that makes it seem as if
formal organisations are indeed capable (or more
capable) of addressing criticisms regarding
political practices and that they similarly don't
include established ways of relating which are
neither transparent nor open to discussion. No
communication is all that transparent, as you
note; but no amount of formal proceduralisms or
ongoing organisations will make it so.

It's hardly possible to insure onself against
stupidities, foolishness or simply a refusal to
question political practices by establishing and
maintaining formal organisations.

In my experience (both in and out of
organisations), the difficulies of expressing
criticisms about particular kinds of political
practice aren't arranged by whether there is a
formal grouping doing those things, but whether
people are asserting some kind of distinction
between public and private -- even, bizzarely,
where definitions of 'the private' begins to
include undeniably public political practices.

IOW, 'cliquiness' isn't reserved to non-party
groupings. People can assert schoolyard in/out
distinctions all over the shop, neither worse nor
better depending upon the kind of organisation.
They can confuse political organisations with
friendship networks (which is precisely how
Socialist Alternative and the DSP recruit and
sustain themselves, thereby making political
disagreement into the real and well-understood
risk of social isolation) or by assuming that
friendship is conditional upon political
agreement.

None of that amounts to a case for party building.

The question isn't whether non-party forms of
practice get around the problems implicit in any
form of communication, but whether the party form
promulgates a very particular form of relationship
and view of others: namely, managerialism.  In
parties, cliquiness -- which is basically a
perverse way to deal with alienation -- is
deliberately instrumentalised, harnessed to (among
other things) generating a managerialist approach
to political practice.

Angela
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