Response to José on group organization (was: Re: [Marxism] The SWP, Gay Liberation and Leninism

["LouPaulsen" <LouPaulsen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jose G. Perez" <jg_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

I think José's post is very interesting and frank.  However, since he then
goes on record as expecting my party to "blow up" shortly -

"It thus becomes attractive, recruits pretty good people, and --with any
luck-- soon is growing and becoming better known. That was the story of
the SWP in the 60s and 70s, and, in a rough ballpark approximation sort
of way, of Workers World and the ISO in recent years. Despite that,
experience shows the model doesn't scale up. Sometimes around a thousand
members or two or three, the group stagnates, goes off the deep end
politically or blows up spectacularly. "

- I feel it necessary to respond to what he says after that.  José pretty
much agrees with Walsingham that "Marxism-Leninism should be junked":

"'Leninism' as it was
understood, not just by the SWP, but also by the groups of the New
Communist Movement and pretty much the entire 'far left' in the
'advanced' capitalist countries is a failed model."

In the belief that he is inventing a new form of political organization,
José then lists a whole series of bad things which the SWP did (and which I
know for a fact the ISO has done), and he "invents" a new form of
organization which does not do them.  I will summarize or excerpt:

(1) Respect local initiative:

"I think
the national organization should respect the autonomy and freedom of
initiative of the local units, or national working groups and fractions,
and the local unit of its constituent work groups and committees as well
as individual members."

(2) Respect individuals' personal and cultural choices:

"the organization needs to develop a sensitivity to the
intersection of the personal, the social, the cultural and the
political."

(3) Act in a principled way toward others in the movement:

"It should respect the autonomy
and organizational integrity of others just as it wants its own
respected. It needs to develop relationships based on trust and
collaboration, not vanguardist attempts to hegemonize everything in
sight."

(4) Practice democratic centralism but not in a heavy-handed way:

"Experience shows that a certain amount of caution and humility should go
into the exercise of majority rule. And discipline should be
imposed/required only when needed."

(5) And: "[T]he organization should have room for members with widely
varying levels of activity and financial contributions."

Am I inclined to quarrel with these points?  Not in the least.  All of these
points have been pretty much part of the political culture of WWP for
decades.  José is re-inventing the WWP! :-)  All of José's complaints about
the SWP's bad practice have been served up to us as cautionary examples
since I joined the party many long years ago by our own old-SWPers and
reinforced by our experience with the ISO.  "In the SWP they would move you
around from city to city."  "In the ISO they will force you to get out of a
certain struggle or community organization if they don't think they are
recruiting enough people from it."  "In the SWP they wouldn't let you have a
'Black caucus' or a 'Women's caucus' or a 'Gay caucus'."   For the last 30
years we have been talking about these things and congratulating ourselves
that we are not in those organizations (not to sound too full of ourselves)
and, in the process, defining ourselves as a party that will do things, NOT
that way, but the right way.

>From a historical point of view, we recruited a lot of people from those
collectives and discussion groups in the late 60's and early 70's whom the
SWP didn't try to recruit.  This really shaped our political culture as a
mutually appreciative blend of "old dogmatic Reds", if you will, and "feisty
diverse youth."  Some of aren't as young and feisty any more, but I hope we
haven't entirely forgotten what it was like.

Have we applied these anti-bureaucratic points with perfect consistency and
skill?  No.  Will somebody be able to come up with counterexamples?  I have
no doubt.  But I don't think anyone will be able to come up with an active
member of WWP who believes that it is RIGHT to suppress caucuses in the name
of "fighting Bundism", or impose restraints of dress or culture or lifestyle
on comrades, or treat other movement and community organizations as game
animals to be hunted down and milked and preyed upon.  The things that José
says are bad things really ARE bad things, but it is quite possible to be a
Leninist without doing them.  Possibly by avoiding them we will have
safeguarded ourselves against the explosive end José predicts for us.

For the last several years, ever since the discussion of "Zinovievism" came
up, I have been fidgeting and grumbling and scrounging around for the proper
way to point out delicately that there is a lot of variation in
organizational practice within the "Leninist model", and some of us are
trying not to make the same mistakes that people believe are somehow
inherent hard-wired parts of that model.  To do that, though, I, who was
never in the SWP myself, would have had to summarize my third-hand
impressions of the SWP, and I wasn't sure they would stand up in this
experienced crowd.  José has now given me the perfect opportunity to make my
point.  THANK YOU, José!  :-)

Lou Paulsen
member, WWP, Chicago




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