[Marxism] ISO sides with Galloway

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Alan Maas writes, "Clive's article appeared in the Views and Voices section
of our paper and doesn't represent an editorial position taken by Socialist
Worker or the ISO."

It is gratifying to see the ISO (US) comrades taking the position that an
article in their paper on what's going on in some other country "doesn't
represent an editorial position taken by Socialist Worker or the ISO," even
though, unless I miss my guess, cde. Maass is being disingenuous. 

Be that as it may, I would urge the comrades to *vigorously* apply and
EXTEND this policy by seeking to transform Socialist Worker into an
expression, not just of their own specific current, but the U.S. left
generally. We --the U.S. Left-- need a paper with that kind of approach,
somewhat like what the DSP comrades describe as being their approach to the
role of the Green Left Weekly.

And in making this suggestion to the ISO comrades, I would add that their
own privileged position within the broadened paper is guaranteed by the fact
that they publish it; whereas the possibility that they open themselves to
by adopting this (and parallel policies in other fields) is becoming the
main organized expression of the U.S. Left.

It may be that in real life --as I found in Solidarity-- disagreements
around how to analyze the Cuban or even the Bolivarian revolution are not as
divisive as to make peaceful coexistence in a common revolutionary
organization possible, PROVIDED we can come up with a plan or program of
common action around THIS and other issues against the enemy. 

This may not be the absolutely official, sanctified by a convention or PC
vote position of the ISO, and you'd better defend it or be expelled, but I
daresay that the editors of Socialist Worker would not have published the
article without a counterbalancing piece and a whole to-do about how
democratic they are --"just witness this debate"-- unless the most of the
leading comrades in and around the office felt comfortable with the decision
to publish the pro-Galloway piece.  

And it's a good thing that the leading ISO folks are sympathetic to the
Galloway wing of Respect. It shows that they have --implicitly at least, and
perhaps not 100% consciously-- drawn a lesson from the shabby, high-handed
and bureaucratic way they were driven out of their international current.
And it is ALSO a good thing that this isn't an OFFICIAL "ISO Position" which
everyone is duty bound to defend.

And with this recent dispute in Britain having shown that the SWP's claimed
membership might be exaggerated by an order of magnitude or so, it casts
further light on what the UK SWP's leadership tantrum about Seattle in --was
it 1999?-- and the ISO was all about. It was about, in part, the ISO
comrades having consolidated in the states an organization with a roughly
comparable number of active members as the UK mothership. A comparable
number of real militants, at least in a ballpark sort of way. 

For all the UK SWP tops knew, the ISO was within a couple of years or so of
becoming an organization of a couple of thousand REAL militants, active
members, and whether consciously or unconsciously (and these things are
rarely really fully conscious), the UK SWP leadership acted in a way that
--oh happy coincidence!-- just happened to preserve THEIR hegemony in the
international current before this potentially much greater weight of the ISO
comrades could become real and make itself felt in the international
tendency.

And I actually tend to be not entirely unsympathetic to some of the critical
comments the British SWP comrades raised about the ISO's activity around
what's come to be called "Seattle." 

But I would add this proviso, that attitude of mine is based on not knowing
the internal situation of the ISO at that moment. But it looks to me from
the outside like that they could have and should have been more involved.
What I am actually completely unsympathetic to, and in fact disgusted by, is
the way the SWP (for clarity: I'm talking about the UK group, not the living
dead, the zombie cult of the same name on this side of the Atlantic) used an
impression or critique about tactical questions that they had to try to
discredit and drive out of their international tendency the ISO comrades in
the United States. 

If on a one-to-ten sectarianism scale, if the comrades of the ISO hit a two
or three --or even a five-- by their lackluster reaction to the motion
around Seattle (and I'm saying this in the spirit of "let's grant for
argument's sake..."), then the British comrades must have hit at least an 11
if not a 20 or 30 on that same scale by their "struggle" against the ISO's
"sectarianism." 

Because here was a group, IS a group, a real live radical organization, with
whatever weaknesses and lacunae, that you might INFLUENCE in a positive
direction. And the British SWP cdes. reaction was to cut themselves off
completely from it because the ISO said 10 or 20 when the SWP thought 40, or
even 75, was closer to the mark in relating to Seattle.

They didn't EVEN disagree on whether this was positive or negative, just on
the questions of how positive and how much the ISO should have done. 

And I think we saw the same methodology at work in relation to Respect. The
SWP was threatened by (although I would say "blessed by") the possibility of
being centrally involved in a movement they did not control. Involved in
actual social motion, not on a HUGE scale, but, yes, on a scale somewhat
larger than the SWP had been used to relating to, and on a scale they could
not control, at least not in a given local area. And the SWP tops recoiled,
just as they recoiled from their ISO "children" having had significant
success in building an organization in the United States, and making their
OWN decisions and their OWN mistakes. 

So I'm glad to see BOTH that the "drift" of leading ISO comrades, at least
in and around their national office and newspaper, is generally sympathetic
to the Galloway wing of Respect AND that this isn't being made an "official"
ISO position. I know some folks on this list will probably imagine that what
I'm doing is making fun of the ISO leadership because of the supposed
"contradiction" in holding two such positions. That is not the case.

The point of this little write-up, on the contrary, is to praise them, BOTH
for having that political attitude on the Respect affair AND for refraining
from imposing it as an official "line" position of the organization as a
whole. 

It is, I think, a hopeful sign.

Joaquín