background on the situation in Canada (fwd)

[Chegitz Guevara <mluziett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marc, "the Chegitz," Luzietti
personal homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett
political homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett/chegitz.html

"Jeezuz Christ Mom! I just saved your life, the least you could do is
offer me an oreo!"

YT, in Neal Stephenson's, "Snow Crash."

Subject: background on the situation in Canada (fwd)

This is being posted anonymously by request.

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Dear comrades,

As of January 10, 1996, a major split has occurred in the Canadian
International Socialists. Below you will find two of the resignation
letters, which will give you background on the scope of and reasons for the
split. As of today, the situation looks something like this: the Guelph,
Ottawa, and Windsor branches have resigned; more than a third of IS members
in Toronto have resigned (or were informed by the leadership they had
resigned), including virtually all members at the IS stronghold York
University; others have resigned in other parts of the country; the IS has
lost several of its leading members, including three who have been in the
group for two decades or more -- David McNally, Sandra Sarner, and Brian
McDougall. More extensive and detailed documents of the faction fight and
split -- including a major theoretical piece by the minority (the Political
Reorientation Faction) on 'Leninism, Trotskyism, and Socialist Organisation
Today' -- will be released in the near future.

As noted yesterday, the New Socialist website can be found at

   http://www.web.ca/~newsoc

We've got some screwups on the page of links to socialist (and other)
websites; thanks to those who brought the faulty links to our attention.

Cheers.

***  Please DO NOT reply to sender; reply to: newsoc@xxxxxx  ***

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            OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS

Dear comrades,

        We are writing to inform you of our decision to resign from the
International Sociaists. This is not a decision we have come to easily, as
each of us has put many years -- in one case more than 20 years -- into
building the IS. Events over the past year or so have convinced us,
however, that the IS is undergoing a political degeneration that is
unlikely to be reversed. We have decided, as a result, to put our political
energies elsewhere. We feel an obligation, nonetheless, to explain our
decision to many members of the IS with whom we have worked over a good
number of years. This letter is addressed principally to them, and not to
the Steering Committee which is directing the transformation of the IS into
a bureaucratic sect.

1. A perspective gone off the rails

        We start from the conviction that the political perspectives of the
IS leadership -- which are largely a crude and mechanical application of an
international perspective formulated by the British SWP -- have created an
other-worldliness inside the organization. The essential elements of this
perspective are the following: 1) that we are witnessing a profound crisis
of world capitalism comparable to that of the 1930s; 2) that this crisis is
destroying mainstream parties and ideologies and creating a tremendous
audience for revolutionary socialism; 3) that IS groups the world over must
transform themselves in the space of a few years from small propaganda
groups into the beginnings of mass parties capable of leading major
struggles. That the perspective is deeply flawed should be obvious; indeed,
it repeats the fundamental errors commited by Trotskyists from the late
1930s onwards.

        In order to try to sustain a perspective that flies in the face of
reality, the Steering Committee has consistently substituted fanciful
prophesies of great working class breakthroughs for clear-headed analysis
of the real terrain of class struggle in this country. Thus, just before
the Liberal government brought down the most anti-working class budget in
post-war history (with $9 billion in cuts and layoffs of 45,000 workers),
Socialist Worker  ran the editorial headline "Liberals on the run!" Then,
after the defeat of railworkers strikes by back-to-work legislation,
Socialist Worker  celebrated with the claim that "the fight-back has just
begun!"

        There is nothing new about small revolutionary groups which try to
sustain morale by constant predictions of great working class victories.
But such practices have not been in the IS tradition -- at least not until
recently. For most of its history, the IS tendency has encouraged serious,
sober and critical assessment of the economic and political realities that
confront the working class movement. The IS Steering Committee now openly
flouts those traditions -- with the apparent encouragement of the SWP
leadership. The result is that virtually anything goes, including the most
recent prediction by Abbie Bakan that "1996 will be remembered as a
breakthrough year like 1917, 1968 and 1989" (Toronto District Public
Meeting,  December 16, 1995). Abbie did not inform her listeners how she
knew this, or where she got her ability to predict the future. But in the
"new IS" serious arguments don't matter. You are meant to believe what you
are told to believe. And a ready stock of insults is ready for those who
question the analysis or the predictions: "menshevik," "conservative," "old
IS."

        In and of themselves, faulty perspectives need not be fatal for a
small revolutionary group. What matters is the capacity for genuine
self-correction of mistakes. And the decisive element here is open and
democratic discussion and debate. That's why it's the creation of a regime
of slander and vilification, of witch-hunting attacks against dissenters,
which is the most dangerous element of the recent evolution of the IS. For
now the otherworldly slogans and predictions are no longer subject to
correction by experience. As members are driven out -- each time with the
slogan "good riddance" -- as dissenters are removed from branch committees
and scratched from the list of people eligible to give branch talks, as
campaigning against individuals becomes the order of the day at National
Committee meetings, the capacity to correct mistakes declines.

         There is a line that is crossed during such a process of political
degeneration: a line that separates a small revolutionary group with its
feet in the real world from a sect. That line has now been crossed in the
IS. The results are clear. Duncan Hallas has described what happens inside
such sects:

                Discussion, which is dangerous to the leadership, can be
checked by hyper-activity; and this, in turn, is justified by the nearness
of crash (or bust). The membership, driven at a frenzied pace, has a high
casualty rate. A large proportion is always new -- and therefore does not
remember the nonfulfilment of past prophecies. A vicious circle is set up
which makes the correction of the line more and more difficult . . . The
leadership, which alone has continuity, becomes unchallangeable and finds
it less and less necessary to check its policies and practice.
("Building the Leadership," International Socialism  40 [first series])

        It is truly a sad commentary that the IS now increasingly conforms
to this picture. Yet it does. And the key reason has to do with the
adoption by the leadership of the idea that the greatest problems
confronting revolutionaries today are to be found inside  the IS, among its
members, particularly a layer of long-standing members.

2. The "Good Riddance" Regime

        The clearest sign of the dramatic shift in the orientation of the
overwhelming majority of the Steering Comittee came at the February 25,
1995 National Committee meeting. There Paul Kellogg introduced for the
first time in the 20-year history of the IS a line which is characteristic
of the other-worldly sect: celebrating people leaving the organization. In
the session he introduced, Paul argued that our attitude to people leaving
the IS should be "good riddance." When challenged from the floor by David
McNally, Paul reiterated the "good riddance" line. It is vitally important
to see the way in which this represented a turning point in the life of the
IS.

        One of the features that distinguished the IS throughout its
history was its refusal to adopt the sectist line that "enemies in our
midst" represent the main obstacle to the growth and development of the
organization. We insisted that the main obstacles are external -- having to
do with the state of capitalism, levels of working class confidence,
activity, and organization, the hold of the trade union bureaucracy and
reformism, etc. When members left, we ascribed this overwhelmingly to the
difficulties of building a small revolutionary organization radically cut
off from the working class. We tried to avoid the sectist mentality which
says that only if we drive out the bad elements -- now known as "the old
IS" -- will we be able to make great breakthroughs. We resisted the idea
that one's revolutionary commitment was measured by the ferocity of one's
attacks on members inside the IS.

        All that changed with the adoption of the "good riddance" policy.
Now loyalty and revolutionary commitment were to be measured by the fervour
with which one prosecuted the "war" against the "old IS." Calls to "war"
against the old IS, to "smash" the old IS became commonplace. The results
were predictable: members were removed from elected positions, large
numbers left the organization, internal discussion and debate dried up in a
climate of witch-hunting against heretics and disbelievers. As a result, we
now have a national leadership which has presided over a considerable
decline in the membership of the IS -- and brags about it! The recent news
that the Steering Comittee is planning further purges comes as no surprise.
It also indicates that the sectification of the IS has probably passed a
point of no return.

3. Fantasies about 1903

        One of the characteristics of bureaucratic sects is that their
leaderships imagine themselves to be refighting great historic battles. The
more impotent their real forces, the more cut off from any real impact on
events in the world, the more the leadership erects a fantasy-world which
sustains delusions of grandeur. Nowhere is this trend in the IS clearer
than in the utterly ludicrous notion that the Steering Committee has been
reenacting the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
Party, the famous 1903 Congress which saw the historic split between the
Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the Russian Marxist movement.

        Again, the IS was for years free of this otherworldly nonsense. No
longer. The example of 1903 is regularly invoked as the  key historic
lesson for the IS today -- as it was at the August 1995 Toronto cadre
school. In the IS tradition we used to refer to this silliness as
"comic-opera bolshevism:" the notion of people in utterly marginal
socialist groups strutting around pretending to be Lenin, and dressing up
others as Martov or Plekhanov was obviously preposterous. Now the cadre of
the IS is being instructed in precisely this sort of idiotic "learning" of
the revolutionary tradition. What you get from such a process of
"education" is not people who can creatively apply the lessons of the
revolutionary socialist tradition to the concrete problems confronting
small groups today; instead you train people in the ability to repeat
slogans and insults -- and to call people "mensheviks." Genuine
revolutionary organizations cannot be built in this way -- which is another
way of saying that the IS is no longer advancing that project.

4. What to do?

        For some time we hoped that the obvious failures of the Steering
Committee's perspectives would force a reexamination and a reorientation
inside the IS. We hoped that a genuine debate would become possible. We no
longer believe this to be the least bit probable. The Steering Committee
has celebrated the decline of the organization, each stage of the way
claiming to be in the midst of a great historic breakthrough. And they have
received the clear stamp of approval from the leaderships of the British
SWP and the American ISO in doing so. In light of the disgraceful group
expulsions in South Africa and Australia pushed by the SWP, we see no
prospect for an open, principled debate.

        For this reason, we have decided to leave the IS and devote our
energies to a new publication. We hope that it will be possible to work
with many of the dedicated comrades who remain inside the IS. We would
welcome any invitation to debate and discuss these issues at meetings of
the IS. But it is our conviction that the future for the politics of
socialism from below in this country lies outside the IS.

Sue Ferguson   David McNally   Alan Sears   Deborah Lee Simmons

December 28, 1995

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            OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS

Dear Comrades,

      During the debate between the I.S. leadership and the Political
Reorientation Faction (PRF), the leadership has failed to live up to the
better parts of our tradition of genuine comradely debate and faction
rights--for example, the ultra-orthodox James P. Cannon's 1940 offer to
Max Shachtman's faction to avert a split in the American S.W.P.: open
publication of its views in the party's organs, joint editing of these
publications, `representation in the leading party committees', etc (THE
STRUGGLE FOR A PROLETARIAN PARTY, 2d ed. (1972), 240). On the contrary,
the I.S. leadership has offered nothing, failing to meet even the simplest
conditions for a real debate: a Special Convention, a membership list, and
no punitive measures (DECLARATION OF THE PRF, 6.a,b,d). Its verbal
commitment to debate has been refuted by its practice of pressuring
younger `soft' PRF members with slander, intimidation, moralism and
appeals to personal loyalty, and extreme condescension (asserting they
have been `duped'). At the same time, PRF members perceived by the
leadership as hard-core oppositionists `not interested in debate' have
been ignored in an attempt to drive them out. The I.S. leadership has
further shown contempt for its members and the debate by ridiculing the
PRF's political positions, treating the debate as a `diversion' from the
`real work of the organisation', openly sniggering during PRF
interventions, attacking the records of PRF members, and name-calling. In
one branch meeting, the I.S. leadership went so far as to violate openly
its own Constitution by unilaterally and arbitrarily changing the criteria
of membership `in good standing' just when the faction document was to be
distributed by them to all members.

      In short, the I.S. leadership has done little to avert a split. Thus
our worst fears have been realised: the I.S., primarily through the
reckless irresponsibility of its Steering Committee, will lose more than a
quarter of its membership (in crucial Ontario where the debate is based,
more than half will be lost)--and significantly more in terms of
experience and activity--rather than conduct a sincere, open and
democratic debate concerning the pressing political differences among the
members. This marks the I.S.'s degeneration into a bureaucratic sect, the
failure of our factional task of politically reorienting the I.S., and
therefore the end of our memberships in the I.S.

      We hasten to add that the internal developments above are not our
reasons for leaving. They are symptoms of the Canadian I.S.'s deeper
political problems, which are the sources of its other-worldliness and
dogmatism and hence of our fundamental--and now irreconcilable--political
differences. First, with Marx we reject the theory that we live in a
period of permanent, catastrophic crisis of capitalism, the theory
underlying the I.S. economic dogma. This theory takes the post-War boom as
the norm and thus equates the 1970s return to capitalism's classic growth-
slump cycle with the advent of an epoch of `wars and revolutions' (Lenin's
characterisation of the period 1914-21). While world capitalism faces
severe difficulties and millions worldwide suffer capitalism's competitive
depredations, the ruling class offensive continues with confidence,
attaining some important successes in increased productivity and profits.
The working class has experienced this as reduced living standards and
increasing insecurity. Although our class has organised some important
acts of resistance, it is still taking a beating. It is still on the
defensive, and the self-organisation and militancy required to really
challenge the ruling class remain weak. Even in states such as France
where the level of class struggle appears to be on the rise, workers have
decades of arduous, escalating struggles if they are really to challenge
their ruling class's power. The course and content of these struggles are
unknown.

      Furthermore, we disavow the I.S. leadership's conception of Leninist
organisation for small groups. It is an uncritical application of
organisational models from the 1920s Communist International, despite the
dissimilarity of the conditions--including the absence of a real workers'
vanguard, never mind mass revolutionary parties. There is no embryo of
such a mass party in Canada, and the I.S.'s pretensions of transforming
itself into such an embryo divert it from its real tasks.

      The PRF's vision for socialist organisation in Canada today is a
radical departure from current I.S. practice, and the debate so far has
shown that the I.S. is incapable of moving in this direction in even a
modest way. This new type of organisation must be serious about feeding
the experiences of its members into all meetings, debates, perspectives,
and publications. It must be serious about marxist theory based in the
lived experience of the working class as a whole and integrally connected
to revolutionary practice. It must present itself through a new kind of
publication, which reaches out to its main audience--students and young
workers--where they are at. Finally, its internal tone must be one of
modesty, humour, humanity, camaraderie, and openness which inspires
members and non-members alike.

      We will of course remain open to co-operating with the I.S. We look
forward to working alongside sincere socialists who choose to continue
inside the sectifying I.S.

Fraternally,

[this letter was signed by 24 of the many resigning members of the Canadian IS]

10 January 1996







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