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[To Marxmail subscribers: this was prompted mostly by a discussion in
Solidarity's "internal" --members and cops only-- email list which has
finally been reestablished ... and it took less than three months! A lot
of what I say below is based on lessons drawn from my personal
experiences in the SWP-US decades ago. Solidarity as an organizations
has lots of sins ... but not in the camp of suppressing debate and
discussion.]
I think anyone with a little experience in matters like this should have
realized that the leadership had decided to expel the Renewal Faction
even before the bulletin with the announcement of the formation of the
faction came out. That is because the same bulletin had an indictment of
the faction formally issued by the Steering Committee as a whole that
very much reminded me of the sort of venomous approach the SWP (USA)
leadership used to drive out and expel members of opposition groupings
when I was part of that leadership from 1979-1985.
A mountain of accusations such as the SC leveled at the RF at the
/outset/ of the discussion obviously seek to inoculate the membership,
to prevent them from calmly considering the views of the opposition. And
having /official leadership bodies/ adopt formal positions not just
against the procedures but the actual political proposals of the
minority early in the discussion, as the New York District Committee did
in Bulletin #8 (the first one dated in January), prejudices the debate
even more.
According to the Renewal Faction's website, the ultimatum that would
lead to their expulsion was presented by what seem to be a few people
from different parts of the country, none of them apparently members of
the Steering Committee. I hope there is more that the Renewal Faction
isn't telling us, like that this was a commission especially named or
something, because the idea that the Steering Committee went out and
rounded up a half dozen shills to present what was obviously a very
carefully-through-through tactical approach in driving these comrades
out of their group after one day of a three-day convention, instead of
comrade Ahmed or one of the others behind the motion standing up and
taking responsibility for it, leaves a REALLY bad taste in my mouth.
* * *
What happened is in line with the impression one gets from looking at
details of various cases of resignations/expulsions/exclusions that have
been publicized in the last few years. Those illustrate that the ISO SC
has extraordinary authority in the group, appointing district organizers
who are responsible not to the district membership but to the SC;
excluding members within a branch's geographic jurisdiction from
participation in branch life and placing them in a punitive at-large
status; and even deciding who is and is not a dues paying member in a
given branch's area. Since it is elected by the convention, the SC is in
reality not subordinate to the NC, whatever theory may say otherwise.
I think this is wrong: people filling organizer and other positions
should be elected, not appointed from above. Subsidiarity and respect
for the autonomy of "lower" units, especially the base membership units,
is extremely important if the organization as a whole, and especially
its central week-to-week national leadership, is to be under the
effective, and not merely formal and theoretical, control of its
membership.
This isn't just a problem of bureaucratic procedures but of "democratic
centralism," misnamed "Leninism,"
<http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=7727>where everyone is obligated to
have the same priorities and tactical approaches, and the local unit's
task is viewed as simply /applying /the course set by the Steering
Committee. In theory, of course, this isn't the SC's course but that set
by the convention. However, the very narrow scope of local decisions
leads to branches that do not have much of a political life of their
own, are not really focused on and rooted in their local areas, and thus
branch delegates routinely approve whatever the national leadership
proposes.
The stifling ideological monoculture that results makes even small
differences uncontainable. The homogeneity or similarity of experiences
from one area to another, often quite an artificial one, means that
there is little ground in diverse experiences for a materially grounded
discussion. There is an invisible reality distortion field that
surrounds the organization: everyone shares the same narratives about
the same three, four or five events: Egypt, Chicago teachers, Wisconsin,
Occupy, creating a hermetically sealed self-referential micro-universe.
The world looks different once you get beyond the organization's
gravitational field.
That of course is a big reason for the centrifugal tendencies that we
see in the ISO, including that often it is only /after/ finding yourself
/outside/ the reality distortion field that surrounds the organization
that you come to finally be able to verbalize more fully and argue
cogently for alternative approaches or positions.
Joaquín
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