Discussion

My Bureaucratic Exclusion from the International Socialist Organization

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(For anyone that wants the short version of this document, feel free to skip to the Lies and Accusations section at the end of the document to read a summary of what I’ve been accused of by the ISO Steering Committee and my responses.)

This document goes into detail about my activity in the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and includes examples of how the organizational culture created by the leadership faction leads to comrades being ostracized, bullied, pushed out, slandered, and expelled for having disagreements, even when those disagreements are within the boundaries of the ISO’s politics.

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Letter of resignation from the ISO: Ben S (Atlanta)

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To all my comrades both inside and outside the ISO:

This letter is intended to announce my resignation from the International Socialist Organization. This decision has been prompted by my experience in the months since I first publicly expressed my support for the ISO Renewal Faction late last year. To summarize in brief, as a result of my endorsement of the Faction, I’ve been effectively isolated and iced out of both the Atlanta branch and the national organization as a whole. This has made it all but impossible to continue my involvement within the group.

In addition to this, my experience within the Atlanta branch–which, I should note, closely parallels and interlocks with that of my comrades in the ISO Renewal Faction–has led me to question the viability of the ISO as a vehicle for revolutionary Marxist politics. In sum, I’ve come to doubt the ability of the ISO to fulfill its stated purpose of “playing a role in laying the foundation for a [revolutionary socialist party].” Despite this conclusion, I remain as dedicated as ever to the politics of revolutionary Marxism and socialism from below.

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The experience of a “dissident” in the ISO (I): The Trial

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[Prefatory note from the Renewal Faction Committee. The following document was submitted by Shaun J to the ISO Pre-Convention Bulletin on December 23. As of January 10, he has not received even an acknowledgement of receipt; therefore we are publishing it on External Bulletin. Although it contains internal material that we normally would not publish, we cannot deny Shaun the right to reply to the misleading document “Boston Response to ‘Appeal for Shaun,'” which makes a number of attacks on him personally.  Any blame for the publication of internal material lies entirely with the ISO Steering Committee, which should have published his reply in the Pre-Convention Bulletin.]

Introduction

This is a reply to the “Boston Response to ‘Appeal for Shaun J’” signed by some members of the Dorchester branch of the ISO. The “Response” is basically dishonest, and on occasion overtly lying about events with which at least some signatories are completely familiar. In order to demonstrate this, I will present documentary evidence and name all sources of information whenever possible. All documentary evidence has, furthermore, been available to the Center since October 6 or earlier.

In order to make my reply manageable, I have broken it into installments. This, the first installment, will deal with the question of my trial against false charges brought by the state, and how the leading members of the Boston district failed to prioritize my defense.

Before going on, however, I should explain why I am writing this lengthy reply. It is not because I enjoy going over this material; it is, in fact, very painful, and I should prefer to leave it all behind me in order to discuss political ideas. But ideas do not come out of nowhere, nor emanate disembodied from the Conjuncture; they are developed by people, by concrete individuals. It is no coincidence that my experience in the ISO became steadily worse as I persisted in my criticism of the group’s perspectives. This document is therefore also a kind of warning to comrades: to either act to reverse the degeneration of the organization’s political culture; to commit yourselves, in advance and permanently, to agree with whatever the leadership says; or to quit.

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A reply to Snehal S (Updated)

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Comrade Snehal S, formerly a leader of the Austin branch, posts on Facebook:

An open note to the “ISO Renewal Faction”: please check your facts. There are no “12 people” who have “been lost”…we know where they all are and only two of them have left the organization. This is at best irresponsible on your part, our political disagreements aside.

This is in response to the following from our platform document on the organizational crisis:

In Austin, the oldest Texas branch with the most cadre, about a dozen members have been lost in the last few months.

Here I’d like to briefly reply to Snehal, because his reaction typifies how many comrades delude themselves about the existence of a crisis in the ISO.

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What is the crime? To publish internal documents–or to criticize them?

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A common “charge” against the ISO Renewal Faction–popular with the leadership faction especially, as it avoids engaging in politics–is that we have not respected the organization’s Pre-Convention process inasmuch as we have published internal documents. But in fact the faction has not published anything that can be credibly interpreted as internal, as Nurit T has explained.

The leadership faction has an amusing rejoinder to this: they consider it an offense to publish anything submitted to the Pre-Convention Bulletin, including our own writings. This (improvised) “norm” is said to apply even if we redact all internal material. Continue reading →

A guide to bad arguments and distractions

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One of the elements of the degeneration of our democratic structures has been an infestation of distractions and bad arguments, sometimes called logical fallacies, that have all too often replaced reasoned debate. If we are to renew our democratic culture, we need to recognize these problems in both other comrades’ arguments and our own. It must be emphasized that while this document was written in preparation for debate around the ISO Renewal Faction criticisms, most of the these have been going around for years, and they aren’t acceptable in any debate.

  1. That’s not Leninist
  2. That’s anarchist
  3. That’s anti-leadership
  4. The ISO is under attack!
  5. These criticisms should have been brought up earlier
  6. This is the wrong way to bring these issues up
  7. They’re on their way out of the ISO
  8. Why should we care, they’re just ex-members
  9. They want to destroy the ISO!
  10. Of course they would say that, they’re middle class
  11. Here’s a list of exciting things!
  12. That’s factionalizing
  13. Other problems

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Has neoliberalism survived?

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It is the current view of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) leadership that neoliberalism has survived the crisis of 2008. I think this is a wrong formulation. If by “neoliberalism” we mean to indicate a certain period of capitalism, then I believe that neoliberalism is over–or perhaps one should say “passing away” or “negated,” since undoubtedly many aspects remain. This is especially true in the higher realms of the capitalist superstructure, which always lag behind changes in the material base.

If the era of secular capitalist growth that began in (roughly) the mid-1980s ended in 2008–which it definitely did–then the economic preconditions for the neoliberal period have ended. Even if the policy (re)actions during the current “global slump” follow the same neoliberal grooves–financial bailouts, capitalization of the public sector, preference for raising exploitation over real capital investment, etc–they operate in a different context.

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A note on the Faction Rules

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Several comrades have asked why the Faction Rules are so strongly centralistic, with so much decision-making power invested in the Faction Committee. This is a good question that reflects some real shortcomings in our current approach; but also demonstrates some misunderstanding of what the faction is trying to do.

Let’s start with the latter point. It should be kept in mind that we are a faction within a larger organization–not a new organization. As our Organizational Perspectives make clear, we advocate a far more democratic and less centralized regime within the ISO, which flows out of our understanding of the conjuncture. However, in order to fight for our views, we felt that it was necessary to organize ourselves in a very disciplined way.

We emphasize the necessity of a fight precisely because of the ways in which we have seen the leadership increasingly act to undermine our political positions by way of maneuvers, and to use that same method of bureaucratic maneuver to exclude members with critical views from the ISO. Comrades need to understand that an argument over the political direction of the organization is not a simple matter of the exchange of differing views, eventually reconciled through detached reflection. It is in fact a struggle over the character of our intervention in the class struggle. Our leadership self-consciously (and wrongly) acts as a permanent faction for its own preservation; we refuse to close our eyes to these facts.

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A reply to two arguments against the faction

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In response to our faction not being legitimate because it is open to members that have been bureaucratically excluded:

The problem is that not including bureaucratically excluded members would mean accepting the Steering Committee’s (SC) exclusion of Shaun J, which has been little more than them not wanting him to be in the organization but also not expelling him. No satisfactory reasons have been given for this.

Back on October 6, the response of the SC to the appeal for Shaun was that the idea of reinstatement didn’t make sense because Shaun had left out of his own volition, and thus it wasn’t up to them.

Shaun, along with another member that had resigned, were allowed to rejoin the branch in Cambridge. After that it was deemed that Shaun was not a member by Ahmed S, who was acting as a representative of the SC. The SCs letter to Boston after Ahmed’s visit does not explain why Shaun is not a member (except vague references to his having left in a splash and having agreed with external critiques). To see more on the exchange, see here.

If we want to get technical, there are currently no rules on how factions should or shouldn’t be composed (there is only a proposal by the Rules Committee, to be voted by this convention), but on the other hand, the SC has effectively excluded Shaun without going through any of the appealable procedures mentioned in the rules (suspension, censure, expulsion). It seems kind of bizarre to consider those grounds for not including someone that has been crucial for the conversations that created these documents, which are being widely discussed and debated in the organization.

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Contributing to External Bulletin

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The ISO Renewal Faction announces that our website, External Bulletin, is open to contributions from all comrades. By taking this step, the faction hopes both to be more responsive to criticism (friendly or not); and to create a space for discussion of higher quality than Facebook yet greater speed than the Pre-Convention Bulletin.

These “unofficial” contributions will be held in the category Discussion. They will be published under the author(s) name(s). Articles published in this category do not define faction policy and are not binding on members of the faction.

Critical pieces are welcome, but we will only accept submissions that are broadly sympathetic with the aims of the faction. (Comrades who are hostile to us are invited to start their own websites.) We reserve the right to refuse publication and to edit for publication. Edits will be discussed with authors prior to publication.

Nurit T (New York City) and Shaun J (Boston) are named as editors.