[Marxism] David Keil report on the ISO conference

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Although I set up the SWP mailing list on Yahoo to shunt discussion from 
ex-members here to a more appropriate locale, the list has turned out to be 
a pleasant surprise. It is not really "sectarian" as Fred feared but has 
generated some interesting discussion, including about gay liberation and 
the SWP. You can find out how to subscribe or just follow the discussions 
at:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/swp_usa/. The message below was written by 
David Keil, an ex-SWP'er who had the reputation of being a maverick when he 
was in. He is not on Marxmail, as far as I know.)


At the ISO conference, July 2005

David Keil

I attended "Socialism 2005" in Chicago, which took place July 1-4 and
was organized by the International Socialist Organization (ISO). This
document is more a set of journal entries and observations than a
summary of events there.

The gathering of more than 1000 was well-organized and had an open
atmosphere of political discussion. It was evident that the ISO
members are mostly young, highly energetic, and politically
sophisticated. The group is cohesive and the members appear to have a
comfortable relationship with the leaders. Non-ISOers who have
political experience have a great deal to learn from these comrades.
The conference indicates the form that the main nucleus of the
revolutionary party will take for the next few years at least.

The ISO welcomed many dozens of non-ISOers to the event, including
many members of Solidarity and other former members of the SWP. The
conference was headed "Build the Left Alternative," which ISO members
say refers to a broader set of forces than ISO alone.

Energy

The most striking example of the ISO's spirit, for me, was the
chanting that began the Sunday rally ? ten or fifteen minutes of
chanting, often with everyone standing up, raising fists, waving ISO
flags. The frequent standing ovations for speakers such as soldier
resister Camilo Mejia, and for international visitors, throughout the
weekend, indicates that ISOers may carry energy into everything they
do. It is an internationalist energy too.

The workshop discussion periods featured interventions by leaders and
rank-and-file alike. These two categories appear to participate in
discussion as equals, as one would hope. Among the rank-and-file
interventions, I noted a good number that were extremely forceful,
indicating that ISO is generating potential mass leaders. Everywhere I
went, I detected plenty of self-confidence and confidence in the
organization, lots of determination and optimism. At the same time,
different people noted their opinion that it has been a difficult year
for antiwar work.

My objectives

My main concerns in attending the ISO gathering were (1) to explore
the organizational side of ISO's antiwar activity and (2) to see what
possibility there is of regrouping into ISO wider forces that now
orient to ISO, such as former SWP members. ISO has distributed a book
by Barry Sheppard about the SWP in the 1960s and has organized a tour
for Sheppard that will continue in New England in the fall. The ISO
rally Sunday night featured Peter Camejo, as the 2004 Green
vice-presidential candidate, alongside four heroic figures (Camilo
Mejia, Pablo Paredes, Rachel Corrie, and Giuliana Sgrena), the last
three represented by family members or colleagues. Camejo and ISO
members are among leaders of an effort to democratize the California
Green Party and to orient it away from the Democratic Party.

Antiwar work

I found that the presentation by ISO leader Paul D'Amato, at the
workshop "Which Way for the Antiwar Movement?" was consistent with the
activities of the Committee for a Fall Action (CFA) in Boston that I'm
participating in (www.BringTheTroopsHomeNow.com); that is, ISO
recognizes that a serious challenge exists to the independent thrust
of the antiwar movement, its support for self-determination, and to
non-exclusion, posed by leaders of liberal groups like UFPJ. In the
discussion I briefly suggested that a wing of the movement is needed
to wage the fight to defend immediate withdrawal, a mass action
approach, non-exclusion, and democratic decision making, and that this
wing needs to acquire an organizational form without challenging UFPJ
and ANSWER head-on. D'Amato responded by saying that ideas like this
will be under discussion in ISO.

It is not clear that ISO has a well-defined line on antiwar work at
the organizational level. ISO neither promotes nor rejects the
perspective of an organized immediate-withdrawal wing. ISO locals in
at least Rochester, DC, and Burlington, VT, participate in and build
city-wide antiwar coalitions (called DAWN, DC Antiwar Network, in DC),
but I see no evidence that this is a national perspective. ISO is
supporting a counter-recruitment contingent for September 24, and a
number of locals, such as New York, are building both the UFPJ and
ANSWER/IAC/TONC actions, just as CFA does in Boston.

The Boston ISO local has been discussing its orientation to antiwar
work for several months. Since March 20, its intervention has been
difficult to describe precisely. ISO members don't participate
actively in CFA, but have observed and have seemed open to the
possibility that CFA is a useful instrument for moving forward. If a
mass-action date emerges from discussions among CFA, UJP, and others,
then ISO may well be attracted to the idea of a caucus or advocacy
group within the broader movement. So far ISO has not seen the
benefits of the approach.

Correspondence with a member of Bay Area United Against the War
indicates agreement that this group and CFA have similar objectives
and methods, though BAUAW is stronger and has existed longer. ISO
members are said to work with this group, but I did not hear reports
in Chicago about that work; I did hear about ISO work in a
counter-recruitment group in the Bay Area.

I believe it is a serious omission that ISO fails to explicitly
project a long-term goal of organizing ongoing city-wide antiwar
coalitions in all major cities, based on immediate withdrawal and a
mass-action focus, and a longer-term goal of unifying these coalitions
nationwide via an open conference to create a nationwide coalition.
However, it appears that there may be an informal consensus or way of
operating that leads to a similar result.

The degree of unclarity in ISO policy on organizational forms may be
due to some uncertainty about the desired political character of these
coalitions. At one (non-antiwar) workshop, ISO leader Joel Geier
criticized the single-issue approach of the SWP to antiwar work in the
1960s-1970s. ISO members often say that the antiwar movement must not
fail to raise the Palestine issue (though I haven't seen evidence that
ISO raises this issue formally in antiwar coalitions).

ISO is quite concerned about discussing with other antiwar activists
the need to support the Iraqi resistance, though again ISO does not
raise this issue formally and in fact more than one ISO leader said
clearly in Chicago that ISO rejects the idea of seeking to make
"support the resistance" a formal position of the antiwar movement.

The claim that ISO wants the antiwar movement to endorse the "support
the resistance" slogan has been made by so many critics of ISO, so
many times, that many people may believe this false claim.

ISO supports mass actions and has a perspective of building a movement
in which civilians and especially soldiers resist the war effort in
their millions. But ISO may underestimate the need to focus on
promoting a kind of action that will lead to this result. Much of
ISO's antiwar work seems to be devoted to counter-recruitment. This is
not bad in itself, but counter-recruitment actions are by nature local
and small. If they aren't used to build larger actions in the street,
they can direct attention away from the goal of mass actions of
hundreds of thousand or millions. It's quite clear that U.S. policy in
Iraq will not be changed much by difficulties recruiting a ground
force, especially difficulties created by small antiwar protests.

Likewise, the activity in the military that ISO features is individual
refusal by soldiers rather than efforts to organize antiwar activity
by Gis within their first-amendment rights. Perhaps there is no known
GI antiwar activity to publicize. Even in that case, socialists need
to promote work in the military while they defend and celebrate
resistance and refusal. I see no evidence that ISO does this, hence it
may fail to directly promote the only activity that can lead to the
mass soldier resistance that ISO looks toward.

In summary, from the Chicago conference I am drawing the conclusion
that ISO properly focuses much of its attention on antiwar activity
but that it currently lacks a clear line on the organizational forms
needed, and its activity is not yet clearly and methodically directed
toward doing what is necessary to mobilize masses of people into
antiwar activity, despite ISO's correct understanding that this mass
mobilization is what is necessary to stop the war. I'm sure the
deficiencies in ISO's antiwar work are due more to insufficient
experience than to any inherent political weaknesses.

The presence and intervention of Gonzalo Gomez, of Opcion Izquierda
Revolucionaria of Venezuela, raised a new question for antiwar work
that none of us have addressed. Gomez was featured at the Monday
rally. He reported that a confrontation is brewing, with the masses
and the Chavez government on one side, versus the Venezuelan oligarchs
and U.S. imperialism on the other side. This raises the serious danger
of a greater military intervention by imperialism. The U.S. is
currently intervening in a quiet way, placing troops near the
Colombian-Venezuelan border, for example. During the April 13 coup the
U.S. had troops ready to intervene in a more open way.

This warning raises the question of how to plan for combining antiwar
work on Iraq (currently the biggest imperialist intervention by far),
with antiwar work on a major U.S. intervention in Latin America.
Already the U.S. is waging two wars. The smaller one, in Afghanistan,
is currently not a focus of the movement opposing the war in Iraq.

One reason for believing that the ISO can develop a line on
organizational forms for antiwar work, and can correct errors it makes
along the way, is that ISO really wants to lead mass movements. This
was a point made clear by the talk by Joel Geier, which was nominally
about the history of the Debs party, the early communists, the CP, and
the early Trotskyist movement. He signaled the mid-early years of the
CP, when despite Stalinist errors it succeeded in leading mass
struggles. Geier said that the revolutionary party must be an engine
for the creation of mass leaders. This was clearly one of the points
of his talk.

Regroupment prospects

The second concern I took to Chicago was how ISO and other
revolutionary socialists can work together and even move toward
merger, under conditions of ISO's evident strength and healthy state.
ISO is in a position to call the tune in its relations with other U.S.
socialists.

In addition to Peter Camejo, those present included Barry Sheppard and
Caroline Lund; Joanna Misnik of Solidarity; and Bill Massey (now of
the Party of Liberation and Socialism, the split-off from WWP that
continues its involvement in ANSWER).

Foreign guests included a leader of internationally unaffiliated
Venezuelan and Swiss parties, and the Australian Democratic Socialist
Party. The Venezuelan group is new but has historical links, through
members, with the Moreno tendency. The Swiss group has published 'La
Breche' for decades but is not formally affiliated to the United
Secretariat. The DSP has connections with the journal Links, whose
editorial board or contributing editors include Malik Miah, Caroline
Lund, Barry Sheppard, Alain Krivine, Boris Kagarlitsky, and Allen
Myers.

Collaboration between ISO and Peter Camejo appears to be very close,
with Camejo presenting a workshop on the California gubernatorial
campaign and speaking at the Sunday rally.

It appears that Sheppard and the ISO leadership have friendly or close
relations despite political differences. (Sheppard's book affirms the
SWP's politics of the 1960s and the 'International Socialist Review'
published a book review critical of some aspects of these politics.)

ISO and Solidarity have had exchanges in the past, including meetings
at the leadership level. Progress toward closer collaboration has been
halted by differences over the way ISO argues for its views on the
Iraqi resistance and over how Solidarity has responded when IS came
under attack from Freedom Road Socialist Organization and others in
the antiwar movement. Misnik initiated an exchange on this at the
antiwar workshop and was answered by ISO leaders and members. It was
clear from this exchange that Solidarity-ISO relations are tense.

I went to Chicago hoping that we could envision a close collaboration
among socialists on antiwar work and steady motion toward a
regroupment in which ISO would lead the way, absorbing and benefiting
from the contributions of up to hundreds of ex-SWPers (not to mention
the Socialist Alternative group ? but I didn't see evidence of SA in
Chicago).

Significant progress soon in these two directions soon seems unlikely.
On the organizational aspects of antiwar work, the ISO line is unclear
as noted above. On regroupment, both the leadership and the membership
of ISO appear to want to discuss and collaborate, but not currently to
regroup ? only to recruit individuals with the goal of assimilating
these individuals to the ISO's program, including the characterization
of Cuba as a capitalist society, in accordance with the theory of
state capitalism.

The theory of degenerated and deformed workers' states is viewed, at
least by some ISO members, as an obstacle to acceptance of a
revolutionary program. Thus a person who joins ISO without accepting
the theory of state capitalism may encounter the expectation that he
or she will either accept that theory or be hampered in work for the
ISO's program and strategy. It appears also that ISO leaders are not
envisioning a multi-tendency organization of the type that might
emerge from a merger with a milieu of people who have the
workers-state point of view. On the other hand, ISO leaders do reject
"homogeneity" per se as an objective, whereas the SWP for decades
praised the notion of a homogeneous party.

On one hand, ISO has the opportunity to "clean house" and incorporate
into its structure very significant remnants of the SWP, gaining a
stronger direct connection to the party of Debs and the original U.S.
communist and Trotskyist movements. On the other hand, it is unlikely
to be able to take advantage of this opportunity unless it modifies
its attitude toward how to integrate people from other traditions into
membership.

State capitalism

ISO members are very much focused on their theory of the state as
applied to Cuba and other countries that are called "socialist" by
their leaderships. Therefore some of my thinking and discussions in
Chicago were about state capitalism.

Capitalism is characterized or defined by socialized production,
combined with private appropriation under private ownership of the
main means of production. The profit motive that drives the system
refers to a private form of profit. In Cuba, owners of the main means
of production are not private, and appropriation of the results of
production is social or public. Hence Cuba is a post-capitalist
society, not a capitalist one, though the state that defends social
ownership is deformed by one-party bureaucratic rule under a Stalinist
party.

Some people fail to see the Stalinist character of the Cuban CP or
erroneously call Cuba "capitalist." Such people may nevertheless be
able to defend a revolutionary program and build a revolutionary
party, because theoretical or political errors do not always have
fatal consequences. Some people have even been able to defend a
revolutionary program while believing in gods of various kinds,
clearly a significant theoretical error.

I went to the Chicago conference thinking that Tony Cliff had raised
some very telling questions about the theory of the degenerated and
deformed workers' states, because this theory had preducted the
certainty of civil war as a precondition to the transformation of such
states into capitalist societies, and no civil war accompanied the
fall of the Soviet bloc. However, being around and discussing with
many members of ISO, who place great value on the theory of state
capitalism, made me think more deeply, and there's a simple answer to
the objection about the failed prediction of civil war.

The answer is that after over sixty years as a degenerated workers'
state, the Soviet Union and its workers were worn down completely. In
this exceptional situation, it was possible for a capitalist regime
(Yeltsin's) to assume power and proceed to privatize the economy,
destroying the workers' state without a civil war. (Though not without
multiple coups d'etat and brief violent episodes, together with a
brutal semi-genocidal war in Chechnya.)

In a similar way, in pointing to Eastern Europe, where property was
nationalized (the private owners expropriated) without a revolution of
the working class, Cliff errs when he claims that to call the result
"workers' states" would contradict our theory that the overturn of
capitalism requires a workers' revolution. Ordinarily, a workers'
revolution is required, but in exceptional circumstances, such as
collapse of a capitalist state and invasion by a neighboring workers'
state, capitalism can be overturned without the revolution and
revolutionary party. This doesn't change our strategy, it just
requires an adjustment of our theoretical predictions.

The discussion of state capitalism is interesting mainly because it
helps make clear that good theory doesn't always lead directly to good
political practice, and bad theory doesn't fatally lead to bad
practice. The relationship between theory and practice is more
complicated than that.


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