Re: [Marxism] ISO's conference.

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chegitz: "Back in 1998, Diane Feeley wrote an article for Against the
Current in which she stated that it was a good thing that the government
removed Ron Carey from his leadership position in the Teamsters. As I
recall, I was the only one in my local that raised a stink that a leader of
a socialist organization was siding with the government against a union.
Carey was eventually indicted, and found not guilty of all charges against
him.

"As far as I know, Solidarity has never admitted it was wrong."

My understanding is that ATC is NOT the organ of Solidarity. And I believe
my understanding is fairly good, having been a member of Soli's National
Committee and Political Committee. During the time I was playing those
roles, I never once took part in a discussion of ATC's editorial line and
direction. Why? Because although sponsored and subsidized by the
organization, ATC was meant to be a forum where various currents on the left
could meet and interact. It has its own editorial board that functioned
entirely autonomously from Solidarity's leading bodies. I guess if the
editorial board got completely out of whack with the majority of the group,
the PC might intervene. But to my knowledge, it never has.

In  addition, Solidarity does not exercise "discipline" over the writings of
individual members nor does it necessarily adopt formal positions as an
organization on all sorts of events on which, in theory, it could. Comrades
are free to express their own individual take on things, including in
Soli-sponsored publications, like ATC, the web site, or other publications
that are viewed as having significant input from Soli members, like a labor
paper that's been mentioned a couple of times in these threads.

Since most comrades would not view what has been raised as some sort of
official Soli positions, I doubt it would occur to anyone to repudiate it.
In this, I think most Soli comrades would tend to be guided by US political
culture. Thus, if there has been no need for the Republican National
Committee to take sides in the current Cheney-Powell-Limbaugh circus, I
doubt Soli comrades will find it necessary to convene an emergency
convention to decide that the opinion Feeley expressed a decade or more ago
was, indeed, her personal opinion.

This is, of course, a very different way of functioning than that of the
self-proclaimed Democratic Centralist groups. In those cases, anything that
comes out in the paper --especially under the name of a very prominent,
leading comrade-- is binding on everyone in the group. Even if you've never
spent five seconds reading or thinking about some subject, you are
expected/required to present the organization's position, not just as the
group's position, but as your own personal position.

I believe chegitz's disappointment in the lack of a formal Solidarity
repudiation of Dianne Feeley's individual opinion on this matter may reflect
a "hangover" --so to speak-- from the practices of socalled "democratic
centralist" groups.

Joaquin


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