Re: [Marxism] Camejo and Shawki/ISO and so it goes...

[Josh Saxe <joshsaxe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Paul Bunyan on the ISO's working class orientation:
"Re: not being good with workers? Well maybe, if you omit the
solidarity work and a dozen meetings they helped organize for the 5
Charleston, SC longshore workers, "The Charleston 5" who were facing
felony charges and possible imprisonment at the hands of the state of
South Carolina. The dozen meetings I mentioned doesn't count the times
a leader from the affected International Longshoremen's Association
local, Local 1422 spoke at their national and several regional
conferences. Also if you admit how many solidarity rallys, they
organized on a local level for various strikes and other labor "

This is classic middle-class Trotskyist "working class work."
Drooling over left-AFL-CIO "labor leaders" when they can be persuaded
to speak at your events.  Organizing solidarity rallies, which is all
fine and good and necessary, but much different than building a base
among workers or having a serious intervention in a struggle (like the
leftists in P-9 for example or the revolutionaries who led occupations
in Argentina).  I went to an anti-FTAA rally the ISO organized at the
San Diego/Tijuana border a couple years back, they had bureaucrat
after bureaucrat after platform speaking to the predominantly student
crowd, which the ISOers called "getting labor involved."  These same
bureaucrats dump the workers money into the pockets of politicians and
push "teamwork" and advertise the bosses business for him with the
workers money.
Besides courting the labor leadership and trying to get left labor
officials to speak at their events, the ISO *says* they don't do
working class work, they openly *say* they are consciously oriented
towards the students, this all comes out of their analysis of the
period.  At least that's what cadres told me last time I spoke to
them.
That said I think it's interesting how successful the ISO has been -
more than any other formation they have benefitted from the last 6 or
so years of increasing activity amongst students.  For the first time
in my political life it seems like in them there is a revolutionary
formation qualitatively larger than a little sect.
As to the oversimplification of politics - every group needs a public
face that's intelligible, and how can we really know what the internal
life of the ISO is, and whether they oversimplify within their
internal discussions (although I guess the guy who made the comment
was an insider)?  My big fear with the ISO and the reason I don't join
them is that I wonder if they will go down the road of the SWP - they
will build a large predominantly student organization unable to
reorient in a rational way towards workers, that's not committed in
terms of its resources to the working class, but will go to whichever
social layer is "active" at a given moment.
-Josh

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