Re: [Marxism] ISO's conference.

[Dan Russell <proletariandan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Lause -

<Ya know, all this nittering about who's more revolutionary than
who...about who's the left wing of what other miniscule
sectlet...etc....It's all music to the ears of the master class....

It's also one of the reasons why I'm not looking to anything from the
quarks of the left.  At some point, we'll have a big immigrant
movement that creates its own left wing.  Or a revived third party
movement (don't care a fig for its self-labeling).  Or a renewed labor
movement.  Or a nationalist movement that emerges clearly in
opposition to the sellouts.

Something new.  Something viable.  Something that LEARNS or has so
much less to unlearn that people and groups that have all the answers.>

I agree completely. Right now it doesn't really matter if the ISO has
1000 members or Solidarity has 400 members; the ISO may be better at
recruiting and retaining student activist/radicals (me being an
example) but if it can't grow in response to the objective conditions
than its 'socialism from below' politics will be worth little. I'd
like to think that folks from the ISO or Solidarity or PSL or anyone
can take the best of what they've learned from these groups into these
movements and hopefully not too much of the baggage of the past.

Sam B -

<I think Eric Johnson has it exactly right. At this point in time,
there is *no point* in magnifying differences between the small
groups, and a lot to be gained by working together, or even
merging/unification.

I fear that what stands in the way of groups working together or
merging, is often not so much political differences as personality
clashes or ego differences (especially among the older generation, who
carry baggage). It is the responsibility of the younger generation to
push the leadership of their own organizations towards more
collaboration and more working together.>

Again, I have to agree. I joined the ISO because they seemed to be the
most active, organized, and visible group in Chicago whose politics I
generally agree with. I share your concern that long-time personality
conflicts and lack of objective conditions have played a larger role
in the fragmentation of our movement than the political differences
they have magnified. I felt that I could only get a better feel for
this by joining and working within the ISO. I'm thrilled that we're
working with Solidarity and the SP in Chicago and hope it continues.

Joaquin -

<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 like that concept of ATC and that is part of the reason I am on
Marxmail. I think (as obviously most of us do) that political
differences need to be aired and discussed openly and that under our
conditions of political freedom there is no need for ideological
censorship. Of course, there is a place for debating theory/practice
and a place for agitation/propaganda/information/news/etc.

A recent International Socialist Review (Issue 64) published a
response to one of Farber's Cuba articles by ISO member Todd Chretien
where he defended Cuba while qualifying its ideology as "revolutionary
anti-imperialist" rather than the ideal of socialism from below. I
would say that this is "ceding an inch" to the "Cuba is OK crowd" even
though I think we can do better than Farber in the first place.

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