Letter of Resignation from Socialist Alternative
2 September 2016
Hello, [former] comrades. I have written this letter to express my desire to resign my position on the National Committee of Socialist Alternative, and also my membership in Socialist Alternative, effective immediately. I joined SA in July 2012, just over four years ago. It has been a long four years, in which time I have watched SA grow from a small political tendency of just over 200 people into a geographically diverse organization of nearly 800 people seeking to become a legitimate political party. SA can claim the first elected city councilor in a major American city since the 1970s; SA more than anyone else can claim the key role in enacting the first $15/hour minimum wage in the US and starting the chain reaction that has resulted in higher wages in many cities and states; SA has truly become influential beyond its numbers in many cities across this country. However, these victories have not come without cost.
Comparing my first two years in this organization with my last two years, I can’t help but notice a major shift in our understanding of Trotskyism, Leninism, and Marxism; our stance on mainstream American politics; our understanding of our place, as cadre, amongst mass movements; even our organizational priorities and what sections of society we cater our messages to. It has occurred to me that since at least 2014 the political leanings and priorities of this organization have changed drastically, in the process becoming incompatible with the material realities faced in some parts of this country, with the tide of the most active and most important social movements in today’s political landscape, and even with revolutionary principles that this organization once held dear. I am no longer comfortable working to build Socialist Alternative, because building Socialist Alternative has come to mean something far different than what it meant a scant two years ago.
Because of this, I feel that it is time for me to depart. Also, I feel the need to express my grievances one last time in a way-too-long ass letter—as I am so wont to do—before I show myself the door. Hopefully, many of you will learn something from this letter and be inspired to think more deeply about the direction of this organization. Hopefully, with the loss of yet another string of resignations that will accompany this letter, the leadership will be inspired to reconsider the actions that are slowly but surely causing the decline of Socialist Alternative. Being realistic, however, I am not optimistic in this regard. Then again, that’s not my problem anymore. Enjoy the read.
Democratic Centralism
To begin, let us have a much needed discussion on democratic centralism in Socialist Alternative; or, rather, Socialist Alternative’s very strange understanding of the dialectic between the horizontal decision-making of democracy, and the top down decision-making of centralism. A common theme in the debates surrounding the expulsion resignation of five comrades in Austin was the question of democratic centralism, and the democratic centralist structures of our organization. The official narrative went “Austin is trying to change SA into a multi-tendency organization by recruiting Maoists with identity politics!” and that “this is not a horizontalist organization of loose, federative structures but an organization that practices democratic centralism!” Austin certainly had some political differences from the leadership of SA, many of them irreconcilable, but the question of democratic centralism is far more complicated than “if you don’t agree with how we make decisions then you’re a horizontalist.” (Side note: I do not know what the word “horizontalist” means.)
I write this letter about six weeks into my second term as a member of the NC. Since fall 2014, I have been one of the people tasked with making key decisions shaping the strategy, focus, and political direction of this organization; at least I was supposed to be. Throughout my first term, however, I noticed a trend in the NC’s decision-making process: it being that, for all practical purposes, the NC has no decision-making process. Hell, the NC is such a symbolic, formalistic, vestigial husk of a leadership body that the EC hardly bothers to actually consult it for decisions. Tactics like the launch of Movement4Bernie and the adoption of the “safe states” tactic seem to have been formulated, discussed, and decided on solely by our Executive Committee, released on various internet forums and announced to the general public, and only after that brought to the National Committee for any serious discussion. Kshama’s 2015 City Council campaign endorsed five Democrats because “we had to in order to win,” though any NC member outside of Seattle would be hard-pressed to tell you when this “necessary decision” was made. It was only through a story on VICE News that many comrades, my-NC-member-self included, found out that an SA member was sent to the DNC as a delegate, meaning that she is a registered, active Democrat. Whether or not these very serious directives with far-reaching political implications necessitated a vote even at the NC level—much less among the national membership—apparently was not considered. The only reason given for this sudden need of expediency is basically “the EC has every right to do this because democratic centralism.”
I am—was—one among many people in this organization that strongly objects to this approach. With that said, the question I ask is not “Why can’t SA be ‘horizontalist’ instead of using democratic centralism?” The question I ask is “Why do comrades below the EC level have so little input or information on how things are done in this organization? What political or practical justification is there for an approach that relies so much on centralism and so little on democracy?”
And now, after a figurative sh*t-ton of internal and external backlash from the safe states tactic and from the almost outright endorsem*nt of several Democrats, the leadership is all too willing to disavow these actions, and dismiss the importance of both the tactics themselves and the fact that there was literally no discussion about them before implementation. I would point out that doing this does not erase from history the various speeches, op-eds, and personal conversations that advocated these strategies. What you’ve done is the equivalent of sweeping the shards of a broken glass into a neat pile and proceeding to leave that pile in the middle of the floor.
Yet, what else could be expected? From my vantage point, it is clear that the EC has become used to operating in an environment with a high degree of unquestioning consensus. Although the upper tier of leadership (EC and decades-long NC members) seems increasingly willing to admit that there needs to be more nuanced discussion at the NC level, certain practices have created a self-sustaining atmosphere which breeds and feeds on blind agreement among the NC. Here’s another parable for you.
SA has just launched its newest initiative aimed at mass recruiting fresh layers of college-educated youth: Socialist Students, which thankfully did make its way onto some NC agendas for discussion before being passed around the internet. I vividly remember an NC discussion on the subject in early June. Many comrades had a number of questions on what exactly was being proposed and how it would be carried out; the document that announced its eventual launch did not elaborate. This discussion was tabled at that time for a future discussion, even though at the National Convention the next week EC member BK talked of it as if the NC had already widely agreed upon it.
At the newly-elected NC’s first phone conference on July 10 the conversation continued, ostensibly for the purpose of further explaining Socialist Students. This explanation from PL contained little, other than the fact that a team of comrades comprised mostly of students had been drafted to lead the banner/organization, set up a website and social media presence, and coordinate the campus drive and possible speaking tour—that and the use of the phrase “fresh layers” numerous times. Also, notably, came an admission from PL that this proposal had not been adequately discussed at the NC level up to that point. In the days leading up to that call, I submitted a proposal to cancel the launch of Socialist Students on the grounds that a) it was politically confused and relied on an overestimation of students’ readiness to build any sort of revolutionary socialist movement, b) that it would fail to draw broad layers of youth that were “not yet ready to join a revolutionary Marxist organization” because it was so openly tied to Socialist Alternative’s name and political program, and c) it contributed to an increasingly prominent trend of mischaracterizing the word socialism by working to recruit “broad layers” of self-identified, Sanders-esque reformist “socialists” to build a socialist movement, which lent credit to the idea that it is possible to fight for socialism without developing an understanding of Marxism. Also, I argued that the organizational structures were unclear. Sure it would be loosely coordinated nationally by students who are SA members, but will there be actual national leadership structures? Will the local leadership structures rely only on SA members? Et cetera, et cetera.
The responses to my objections were surprising in how far they went around my specific objections without actually addressing them. Responses ranged from generic examples of how we used youth groups to build around particular issues—which I should note is not the same as building a socialist movement—in the past; how the political terrain is heightened and we have to have something, even if this particular something is unclear, in place right now to counter the ISO and DSA’s campus presence; how the banner of Socialist Students is optimal for capturing those trying to find out “what they are politically”; and how Socialist Students will not take identical approaches in different locales, but be a banner in some places and an organization in others. To sum that up: “we’ll figure it out as we go”.
The subsequent vote on my proposal to end Socialist Students (including non-binding NC observers) was two (both full members) in favor and thirty-six (twenty-seven full, nine observers) against, with two (one full, one observer) abstaining. Here we were, the National Committee, voting on a directive that would represent a pivotal change in the focus of SA from here forward, after an admitted lack of political discussion and an admitted lack of finalized planning even a mere six weeks away from its debut, and Socialist Students got a resounding endorsem*nt with little more explanation than “we’ll figure it out as we go.”
This, and the fact that in quite literally every single NC vote, the votes against the EC’s position are enough to count on one hand (out of an average of twenty-five voters), leaves me questioning how this level of consensus can be reached so consistently. I realize that the common denominator here is a consistent lack of discussion on issues. There is clearly an unwritten rule among the veteran leadership that total consensus on all issues is best to maintain stability and avoid a situation like the bad old days of stagnation and regional factionalism like in the 90’s and early 00’s; as much has been said to me by EC member TM, who was around in those days. Discussions on our political projects, when they do happen, always end up being an hour-long echo chamber of the veterans rehashing and regurgitating the EC stance on a particular situation ad nauseam.
Political justification of directives is astoundingly narrow in scope, focusing only on why “x” has to happen in the here and now and some musings about “flexibility”, especially when quoting Lenin or Trotsky and/or explaining why it’s okay to endorse Democrats sometimes. There is little to no discussion on what outcomes this may produce and how we should react to them, how this will impact our class orientation, recruitment strategies, education and consolidation efforts, etc. going forward. But, of course, the vote is guaranteed to go one particular way, so these problems become moot regardless.
To sum all that up, the NC is nothing more than a rubber stamp for the EC. Period. Because of the unquestioning consensus, EC-NC interaction is purely ceremonial and invariably reinforces the EC’s already-made decision. To echo the sentiment expressed to Mobile comrades by former NC member JG, who remained in the Austin branch after the split, (paraphrasing) “when the EC makes a decision, can’t we be humble and accept that it’s the right decision?” This person is the only one I’ve heard say such a thing, but when the bulk of the NC is a layer of highly prestigious comrades that have been in the leadership for decades and have somehow developed perfectly identical political leanings, it’s not farfetched to suggest that peer pressure reigns over many of those new to leadership (and maybe a few not so new), especially if new to Marxism in general. This was certainly the case with me upon being elected to the NC in 2014, when I was twenty-three and had only been a Marxist for barely two years.
‘Til You’re So f*ckin’ Crazy You Can’t Follow Their Rules
More evidence of the rampant centralism (read: cliquish bureaucracy) in this organization is the leadership’s propensity to bend rules: to somehow always interpret policy and protocol in a way that is unfavorable toward those viewed unfavorably by the leadership, and favorable toward those in their good graces. In February this year, nine comrades in Austin decided to lower their monthly dues to $1 as a symbolic gesture to highlight their grievances with the leadership. After about a month of warnings, five members who had not re-raised their dues were “considered to have resigned” from SA, despite not having expressed a desire to resign up to that point, and despite the warnings not specifying that this course of action would be taken. Justifications given for this de facto expulsion were that dues are a vital part of the functioning of this organization and to stop paying dues was in effect a resignation, but what was being ignored was that these former comrades did not stop paying dues. I’ll admit that I’m not as familiar with SA’s constitution as I should be, but I would wager that there is nothing in it establishing an amount that is too low to be considered monthly dues, and that falling beneath this threshold is an effective resignation. Of course, $1 is a purely symbolic amount meant to avoid paying dues in earnest while being able to say that dues are still being paid. The thing is $1 is more than zero, so this is correct; these comrades were still paying dues.
So were their dues the only factor in considering their action a “resignation”, or was this a convenient cover to dispose of a faction of political dissidents? In asking myself that question I can’t help but remember the case of JL, an NC member from New York—who was not on the EC’s bad side—being catered to despite becoming completely inactive in SA for almost two years. This comrade appeared at the face-to-face NC meeting in Minneapolis in March 2016, the first SA event he had appeared at since the 2014 National Conference, and was allowed to immediately reassume his NC role as if he had never been gone. From what I am told, he still disappears quite frequently only to reappear when needed by the leadership.
Exhibit B: I have literally lost count of how many conversations I’ve had with RK, an NC member who is also Mobile branch’s official wrangler, concerning the membership of former Mobile comrade GM. Particularly RK’s insistence that this ex-comrade be treated as a member within our branch, advocating that she be sent to the 2016 National Convention using branch treasury funds, asking her for information on the internal activities of our branch, sending her internal documents and information, and drafting her to write an article for the newspaper. Never mind that she became inactive in late 2014 and confided to me herself that she planned to stop paying dues in November 2015, these things seem to not to be important when regarding someone who agrees with most of the leadership’s politics.
Compare this to the recent vote in the Queens branch to suspend Margaret Collins. What kind of pseudo-democratic, Judge Dredd, kangaroo court nonsense allows four members of a branch committee to express a complaint about a comrade’s behavior, recommend that comrade’s disciplinary action, and then turn around and vote on it themselves? The excuse given to me by LP, one of the four complainants, after I brought up SA’s Harassment Policy and how it forbids BC members from participating in a grievance that they themselves are involved in, was that no one charged Margaret with harassment so these provisions did not apply. (I think it is important to note that of the four complainants, three are on the New York Executive Committee, two are NC members, and one is also an EC member in addition to all being Queens BC.) I would argue, and did to him, that a complaint about a comrade hindering a branch’s growth by creating an “uncomradely atmosphere”, and to cite her personal disdain for and behavior toward specific comrades as evidence of her uncomradely tendencies, is a complaint based solely on a comrade’s behavior, and does qualify as harassment. Therefore, harassment policy procedures should have been followed and the disciplinary action decided by a grievance officer. The complainants should not have been allowed to decide the course of action and participate in the vote. The fact that these comrades have such clout in New York and in SA nationally should not and does not justify circumventing procedure and carrying out a personal attack as if it were a legitimate political grievance.
Beyond that though, for these comrades to vote on suspending a member based on their own grievances constitutes a severe conflict of interest at the least. LP also said to me that only four votes of the sixteen member branch in Queens is not enough to skew the vote; this is not how math works. Theoretically, a tie of 6-6 between twelve people can become a resounding majority of 10-6 out of sixteen when four votes are added to one side. From information confided to me, the outcome of the actual vote was not dissimilar to this hypothetical scenario. Between the four complainants giving themselves authority to vote despite their conflict of interest; inviting GH, a non-branch attending, semi-active comrade from New Jersey to participate in the Queens branch specifically for this vote; and drafting TC, a former full-timer that left Queens in June 2015, to write a letter expressing how “undemocratic” it is for Margaret to debate political issues so often; it is flabbergasting that this vote could be considered anything close to legitimate. But again, we’re dealing with someone who has been a decades-long nuisance to the entrenched leadership. Rules? Pfft. What rules?
Cult of Bern-sonality
What is striking about the bobble-heading tendencies of the NC and the show trial tactics for suppressing dissidents, beyond the actions themselves, is the use of these tactics to enforce a steady march to the right on the part of the leadership. This rightward push is epitomized by SA’s tactics surrounding Bernie Sanders and other less related, but similar actions concerning Democrat politicians. Discussions before the Bern turn, what few of them there were, involved a lot of hemming and hawing over the meaning of the term “critical endorsem*nt”, and the need to work amongst this historic campaign while criticizing points of Bernie’s platform too closely resembling those of imperialist, corporate Democrats. However, the leadership of this organization has a strange understanding of the dialectic between criticism and endorsem*nt; much like they do with the dialectic between democracy and centralism.
As for actions that constituted this “critical endorsem*nt” of the Sanders campaign: SA created #Movement4Bernie to draw thousands to whom we could disseminate our radical message at rallies and marches. Numerous phone banking, fliering, and other active campaign events for Bernie were carried out by SA members; the EC even advocated early on that comrades vote for Bernie Sanders in primaries in states not requiring them to register as Democrats to do so—though I’m certain this was not a deal-breaker for some. M4B phone banking and other events took precedence over branch meetings in some cities, for multiple consecutive weeks in at least one branch. Tens of thousands of people were mass invited to join M4B and further to join Socialist Alternative as the next step toward helping Bernie win in November.
So what’s the catch? What was the critical part of our critical endorsem*nt? Every step of the way—almost every step at least—we called for Bernie to break from the Democrats and form a party of the 99%. That’s it. The end. Only at one point did SA vaguely criticize Bernie’s diet war hawk foreign policy, a point that even the most ardent Bernie Bros criticized him on. Bernie spent much of his campaign highlighting how he didn’t vote to invade Iraq in 2003; he said nothing on how he did vote to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and did approve the NATO bombing of Kosovo in 1999 and neither did SA. SA said nothing on Bernie’s past and present kowtowing to the Democrats and espousal of lesser-evilism. SA’s call to support Bernie while pushing him to leave the Democrats failed to factor in the fact that Bernie’s mission in running as a Democrat from the outset was to reform the Democratic Party, despite the fact that it has been tried and failed like six [notable] times in the past fifty years. The generic call of “break with the Democrats” treated these revelations as if they happened in a vacuum and had no bearing on the present campaign. It should have been very much clear after the DNC brazenly attempted to sabotage his campaign in December 2015 and Bernie didn’t break with the Democrats that he was never going to break with them. SA should have been prepared to move beyond Bernie and make the call to build a third party long before late June (swear to god I’ve been saying this sh*t since February).
Even worse than how this tactic was carried out, however, was the rhetoric underpinning it. Bernie Sanders is a New Deal style reformist; on numerous occasions he has touted Scandinavia as the basis for his brand of socialism. Bernie Sanders cannot be called anything remotely resembling a revolutionary and will say so himself. It is known. Yet, in the early stages of M4B, numerous comrades gave speeches stating that “we’re socialists just like Bernie Sanders.” It suddenly became unimportant for us to differentiate ourselves as revolutionary Marxists from reformist “socialists” believing it possible to legislate our way into socialism, all for the sake of recruiting “progressive Democrats” and other varieties of liberals. M4B was carried out on the idea that a win for Sanders would be a win for socialism because it would popularize a socialist platform and would further the contradictions in the two-party system. Even just typing that doesn’t feel right… how could a win by a politician so fiercely loyal to the Democratic Party cause a rift within the Democratic Party? That question has been answered by recent events, I believe. Bernie very much was a winner in this election in a manner of speaking. His challenge to Hillary was exponentially more successful than expected and activated a massive horde of previously apathetic and disillusioned people looking for a genuine left solution… which he promptly handed over to the Democratic Party. Even after clear efforts by the Democrats to undercut him despite him having a better chance at beating Trump than Killary, even against the wishes of a good number of his own supporters who aren’t buying the “party unity” bullsh*t, Bernie folded and shifted immediately into stumping for Hillary. If he had won, it is clear that faith would have been restored in the two-party system and the idea that the Democrats can be reformed. As for Bernie popularizing a socialist platform, it is excellent that these pro-working class issues are now (or were recently) at the very center of political discourse, but I would hope that comrades realize that there is more to a socialist platform than progressive measures.
What makes this foolish rhetoric so much worse than the historically-blind, cartoonishly optimistic tactics it supported is the fact that this rhetoric is internalized and for over a year now has produced all sorts of politically-confused hogwash amongst even somewhat experienced comrades. Far too many comrades were (and still are) too busy feeling the Bern during the campaign to remember our primary goal in pursuing this tactic: to capture the radical layers of Sanders supporters convinced of the need to break from the two-party system and disillusioned with capitalism and guide them to revolutionary politics. The leadership’s incorrect analysis of the prospects of a Bernie win turned us from a noble goal of building a radical movement from portions of his campaign into a mindless hysteria of OMG BERNIE CAN WIN!!1!!!11! As early as March this year, even some NC comrades were proclaiming M4B an astounding success based simply on the high attendance at M4B rallies. March was way before the moment of reckoning where if Bernie lost, his followers would have to choose between settling for Killary or fighting for a genuinely progressive party, which is where we would come in to influence their decision. Yet, the mere presence of thousands of people, even this early on, means we were already successful. Even the EC seems to have been overly enamored with these early results—numerous articles written by EC members expressing the necessity of this tactic read less like theory-based political justifications from serious Marxists and more like interviews with Charlie Sheen circa 2011: HELLOOO! WINNING! The self-gratifying over the largely cosmetic detail of rally attendance, especially in such an early stage of the campaign, is so out of control that SA’s leadership has talked itself into thinking that the Bernie campaign has awakened the beginnings of a new socialist movement! Lolwut.
So deluded was the leadership by the prospects of Bernie’s “movement”, or the prospect that he would form one, that they promulgated a “safe states tactic” calling on Bernie to run as an independent only in the forty or so states that are not “swing states”. According to the leadership, this argument thwarts someone saying that there shouldn’t be a third party (even though there are literally always more than two candidates) because it will “split the vote” and possibly hand the election to Donald Trump in those battleground states. It is hard to navigate the stupefying fear that some people have of Donald Trump, but this is literally the worst argument that can be made to undercut that fear and the resulting lesser-evilism. It actually supports it by saying that a radical movement should wait if it has the chance to put a scary Republican in office. It capitulates to Democratic Party rhetoric about the Doomsday scenario that will take place if you don’t vote for them, which is what has produced most people’s wildly ill-informed perceptions of how elections works. This is not how you radicalize people.
SA could have pointed out the massive support for progressive measures like single-payer healthcare and a $15/hr minimum wage that presidential candidates of neither corporate party support. SA could have pointed out that 91% of millennials would like to see a third party and that there is massive disillusionment with the two-party system, meaning that not every single “left vote” up for grabs in the election is already guaranteed to the person that happens to have a “D” next to their name. SA could have explained, based logically on these facts, that vast portions of the eligible voting populace likely do not vote at all because there is not an adequate leftist choice, and that the best way to fend off the greater evil is by building a left alternative to galvanize these potential voters. This is how you radicalize people.
Then of course there’s the preposterous idea that you can cut-and-paste swing states from previous elections into the context of this election. If anything is clear concerning what the experts call swing states, it’s that none of these “experts” could find their own ass crack even if they were given a map of their ass. North Carolina went blue in 2008, the only time it has done so since 1976; Pennsylvania has gone blue every presidential election since 1992; Wisconsin since 1988. Florida, Ohio, and maybe Virginia are the only states unpredictable enough to consider swing states if you look back over the past ten or so election cycles, but regardless they all went blue in 2008 and 12, and are polling a solid blue right now. In fact, all the “swing states” and even a few red states are polling blue right now. If those same polls are any indicator, the swing states in this election will be Arizona and Georgia. f*cking Georgia is polling slightly in favor of Hillary Clinton as I type. I say all this even though the leadership has officially disavowed safe states, only because one particular NC member in Chicago, SE made a Facebook post just in the past few weeks advocating a safe states approach in voting for the Green Party. Why? Just why?
All that said, let us lay to rest any delusion that SA’s M4B tactic was anything less than an outright endorsem*nt of Bernie Sanders. It definitely can’t be called a critical endorsem*nt just based on the fact that there was no criticism of Bernie, just of the Democratic Party. Was Movement4Bernie even a success? Nope. M4B did nothing but participate in, and try to claim ownership of, a minimally-successful walkout of a small minority of Sanders delegates from the Democratic National Convention, one that would likely have happened regardless of the highly-touted presence of PK, the mole in the opposite party’s camp (I won’t say SA’s mole in the Democrats’ camp because I’m not sure that this would be accurate). The membership boost gained from Bernie activity has long since come to a halt and even contracted as SA has hemorrhaged experienced radical organizers in favor of semi-political neophytes.
Because SA failed to adequately criticize Bernie’s shortcomings, mistook the false consciousness of “socialism” promoted in the political mainstream for sympathy with genuine revolutionary socialism, mischaracterized the enthusiasm behind the cult icon of Bernie as the makings of a socialist movement, mobilized resources for the sole purpose of helping Bernie win based on a misanalysis of what that win would do to destabilize two-party politics, failed to realize Bernie’s long-standing unwillingness to break from the Democratic Party, and failed to detach from Bernie’s campaign early enough to build an adequate campaign for a third party based on false hopes that Bernie would magically create this third party himself, SA only managed to create a stagnant hodge-podge of people whose political opinions and willingness to participate in politics are largely tied and bound to the personage of Bernie Sanders. A small number of them may be convinced not to fade back into the lethargic slumber from whence they came. A small number—smaller than it would be had the “safe states” tactic not been propagated—may be convinced to vote third party. A larger number will feel it necessary to vote for Hillary to stop Trump because he’s a fascist and will kill millions (this was literally said to me by a former comrade based near Minneapolis; actually it may be a current comrade, I’m not sure). SA can only blame itself for this outcome, for bastardizing its revolutionary message to better appeal to the more moderate portions of Bernie’s followers.
When confronting anyone [correctly] labeling SA’s tactic as an endorsem*nt of Sanders and not merely an intervention in the Sanders campaign, our EC would typically respond with something like: “this campaign is historic and has the potential to build a socialist movement; we have to mount a bold intervention instead of just sitting on the sidelines like they’re advocating!” What the hell is so bold about rebranding a revolutionary Marxist cadre as a “Scandinavian socialist”, loosely leftist outfit that sprang forth fully formed from Bernie Sanders’ loins? The only bold things SA has done recently is to proclaim victory even as its cadre is less experienced, less educated, and less capable of building radical cadre than at probably any point since its founding; and to insist that a socialist movement can be built from the decidedly non-radical portions of the Sanders campaign that it has marketed itself to.
That and all the doublespeak concerning their interactions with the Democratic Party. As much as the leadership is willing to trash the Democratic Party in the presidential election, rightfully so I would add, it does not overwrite the fact that Kshama Sawant’s reelection campaign effectively endorsed five Democrats in concurrent Seattle city races. Why was it so necessary to endorse these Democrats? Because we had to WIN! We’re rockstars from Mars with tiger blood! Or something like that. This “it was the only way to win” excuse is laughably weak, however. When Kshama ran for Seattle’s city council in 2013, wasn’t the whole point to build the campaign through channeling a mass movement of working class Seattleites fed up with the Democratic Party machine acting as surrogates for the corporate elite at the expense of working people? I certainly do not remember the endorsem*nt of Democrats being touted as a necessity back then, yet against all odds and predictions Kshama won her seat. And this was against a twenty-year incumbent with massive corporate and media backing! In 2015, Kshama ran a quantifiably easier race against Pamela Banks, a dark horse candidate who decided to run in the eleventh hour after two previous challengers backed out of the race, and who had less of a chance of defeating Kshama than Richard Conlin did; but all of a sudden endorsing Democrats became necessary for survival? Yeah, whatever.
SA’s leadership isn’t as repulsed by the Democratic Party as their election year rhetoric would suggest. The news of those Democrat endorsem*nts in Seattle may be news to some of you (with all the lack of discussion of it when it happened and the attempted whitewashing that has been happening since) but the NC has been talking about it since this January (after it happened, of course). During the NC conference call in January, JH, a longtime NC member based in Philadelphia, said (paraphrasing) “I’ve been in this organization for twenty-nine years and I don’t think it was ever our position to never, ever, ever, ever support a Democrat.” PA, a recent leadership transplant to NYC who once spoke very frankly about his dislike of Bernie Sanders, recently took the opportunity to rejoice over Bernie-crat politician Zephyr Teachout winning a seat in something somewhere in New York. (Full disclosure: I had no idea who Zephyr Teachout was until about six weeks ago and now, after finding out, am still unsure why she is worth remembering.) Though SA likes to pretend it has now hopped off the Bernie train, it is following him in his delusions of affecting change through building the profile of progressive Democrats and somehow facilitating a split in the party. Here we see that lack of historical analysis again; Bernie-crats have long held positions in Congress and various state legislatures, and they have been able to wield no power individually. This is not going to change just because Bernie Sanders said so.
Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly; maybe Emmanuel Goldstein has brainwashed me into thinking there was a time when the Democrats and Republicans were both considered to be aligned against the working class and that the working class were our allies. I suppose the Ministry of Love will be coming by to teach me a lesson on how we were never at war with the Democrats and that the Democrats have always been our allies against the Republicans! If they can find me that is, all us proles look and act just alike. It’s practically impossible to tell one of us from another.
Identity[-less] Politics
The turn to political priorities like M4B and Socialist Students bring me to another objectionable feature of this party: its stance on identity politics.
Let it be said right here, right now that I do not endorse identity politics or identity-related goals as an end goal of the struggle (lest someone find it necessary to attribute to me political views that I don’t actually hold). Liberation for oppressed minorities comes when the ruling class is deposed and capitalism is destroyed, not when the ruling class contains a sufficient number of minorities doing the oppressing.
Anyway, from what I can tell, Socialist Alternative’s stance on identity politics is best summed up by the article “Identity Politics and the Struggle against Oppression” (which is on the SA website) by Hannah Sell of the Socialist Party of England and Wales. One misstep I believe this article makes is in overstating the intentions of practices like privilege checking. Sell argues that those who encourage people to “check their privilege” are suggesting that racism, sexism, heteronormativism, and other oppressions are things that extend purely from interpersonal interactions, thereby dismissing the role of class and systemic power in oppression. I would argue that privilege theory is simply a means of spreading social consciousness in interpersonal interactions.
Capitalism stratifies working people into particular identities and fabricates differences between them to keep working class people wary of one another and less able—and often less willing—to organize across demographic lines. People of one demographic are taught that they cannot relate to people of another demographic and become blind to their view of the world, especially when we’re talking about demographics that happen to look like the ruling class. As it happens, the ruling class (let’s use the Western world for familiarity’s sake) is now and has always been white, straight, cis-gender males. They have created and maintained a system that benefits this demographic more than anyone else by oppressing them less openly, and caters to this demographic with its rhetorical and cultural output. Part of their means of stratifying working people is by pushing the lie that working people who are white, especially if they are also straight, especially if they are also cis-gendered, especially if they are also male, can be rich one day through hard work and perseverance, and that anyone who says otherwise are lazy, entitled brats trying to game hard-working people; trying to game them. Of course, they stand about as little chance of becoming wealthy as most non-white working people, but they’ve been brainwashed their entire lives to believe otherwise. People who have spent their lives in these social bubbles propagated by the ruling class are likely to be unaware of the particular forms of oppression faced by people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people, and will need to be educated on them in order to understand why we struggle.
However, it is correct that privilege theory, and related tactics like “safe spaces” have no use as anything other than conversational tactics. I will not pretend that there are not identity-based sects that [foolishly] reject class politics. These groups conflate tactics like privilege theory and safe spaces with radical action and exclude those wanting to work with them in solidarity against oppression simply because they don’t look the part. However, we as Marxists should be careful about appearing to be dismissive of anyone who has ever done so little as told someone to “check your privilege”. It would be anathema for any revolutionary organization operating in today’s atmosphere to outright ignore issues of identity and those attracted to them. Sell’s article correctly states that most activists begin their careers with some degree of identity politics; I myself, even being a Marxist for several years now, relate my understanding of Marxism to my identity as a working class black man and study Marxism [partly] to understand how to reach black liberation. Our role as revolutionaries seeking to unite the working class is to understand the oppressions of various oppressed demographics, and formulate an understanding of how these forms of oppression are enforced by the ruling class in the interest of maintaining capitalism. We must differentiate between those interested only in the dead-end forms of identity politics that seek to preserve the ruling class on the condition that it become more diverse, and those radicalizing layers of people who can be brought to see their particular identity within a greater framework of class politics.
This is where Socialist Alternative comes in (yes, I’m finally getting to the point). The leadership of Socialist Alternative seems have a troubling inclination to dismiss any sort of identity-based understanding even of Marxism. A prominent factor in the aforementioned ostracization of comrades in Austin and San Marcos was their alleged endorsem*nt of identity politics. At one point, Austin elected a BC that was deemed “artificial” by the EC for not placing someone the EC felt to be the most prevalent in guiding the branch’s politics—someone who happened to be a white man—in the branch organizer position. This “artificial” branch organizer was at the time a woman of color. In responding to this warily, and in taking the side of a female comrade of color in San Marcos who felt she was slighted by white male members of the EC, some comrades in Austin and San Marcos were apparently “fetishizing the most oppressed layers”, as Maoists are so wont to do.
In their zeal to equate even the slightest sympathies toward identity with Maoism, the leadership has conveniently ignored its own problem with fetishization of some of the least oppressed layers. Every single document on every single political directive SA has taken on in the past year prattles on about how fresh layers of youth will build this organization into a major party, how fresh layers of youth are rapidly radicalizing and can be brought into socialist politics, how fRESH LAYERS of youth will build the revolution to save us from the clutches of capitalism. The leadership has abandoned any pretense of building among the working class and helping revitalize the labor movement in favor of these fresh layers. As far I can tell, fresh layers means layers of vaguely progressive, moderately affluent, disproportionately white hipsters fresh out of the suburbs that sympathize at least somewhat with left populist ideas, even if they are not inclined toward building radical movements to achieve them.
Instead of working to understand and develop tactics to acknowledge and correct pure identity politics, Socialist Alternative’s leadership has become devoted to building a movement solely amongst people without a political identity and has consequently developed a breed of identity-less politics. In May I wrote an article for the website about George Zimmerman auctioning the pistol he used to murder Trayvon Martin, linking Martin’s murder to the birth of Black Lives Matter, and summarizing the problems with BLM and what it needs to do to overcome them. My article was returned to me three times, with RK explaining on the third rejection that it should be written in a tone more appealing to people “on the fence” about BLM. SA’s newspaper and website seem fearful to publish any content that might be too strongly-worded for people who are “on the fence” about movements related to racial, gender, or sexual oppression—never mind that droves of people are already over the fence, lounging next to our pool, and waiting on someone to fire up the grill. The newspaper has become almost solely focused on how aspects of today’s political climate fit within the context of the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Identity-less politics explains the embarrassingly stark dearth of literature on race struggles, women’s struggle, and LGBTQ+ liberation written by this organization. SA’s literature has a remarkably narrow focus on environmental issues (which itself is fine, but which is an issue that most appeals to liberals) and cut-and-paste novelty pieces leaning a little too heavily on Occupy-era rhetoric to call for a break with the two-party system. Black Lives Matter, with all its faults and flaws, is a defining feature of today’s political epoch and yet our leadership was on the verge of dismissing it completely until about two months ago. Even a recently penned pamphlet on the 1969 Stonewall Riots partly edited by RK—while an admirable effort—managed to literally glance over the events of the first riot, including the role of transgender women of color in starting and leading the movement.
Identity-less politics explains the attempt to place Seattle NC member JS, a heterosexual, cis-gendered comrade at the head of the LGBTQ+ Caucus at the National Summer Camp in May 2015. Not to say that this comrade is not capable of revolutionary leadership, this I do not know, but surely there are numerous LGBTQ comrades capable of providing leadership and that have the added benefit of lived experience when it comes down to developing perspectives. Surely most people would think it foolish to place a white comrade at the head of the People of Color Caucus, this is no different.
Identity-less politics has bred a two-faced approach toward different sectors of society as well. To those who have no background in politics and who have largely un[in]formed opinions on various issues (a disproportionately white, college-educated, and affluent demographic), SA’s approach is something akin to that of the DSA: “Hate the Democrats but not really? You like socialism because public libraries and fire departments and snowplows are socialist? You’re voting for Bernie Sanders?!? Welcome, comrade! Come right on in, we’ll sort out that other stuff later.” Yet, to those who have some preexisting knowledge of leftist thought, any inkling of identity-related sympathies, and especially roots in some school of Marxism or general leftism not identical to SA’s program (a more diverse, more working class demographic), SA adopts an approach so rife with ultra-left doctrinarism and petty exclusionism that it would shock most Spartacists. To hear some of our enlightened sages in the EC like PL tell it, so much as reading Jacobin magazine semi-regularly is guaranteed to breed false conclusions and make one ineligible for membership in the most winningest organization in the history of winning. SA’s leadership lends uncritical support to Bernie Sanders and his supporters—and no, futilely saying “break with the Democrats” 999,999 times is not criticism—because they can maybe be led to proper conclusions eventually, yet some of the same people seem wary to support the “populist” Green Party because of some perceptions of minor quirks in their party structure? The Democratic Party—which routinely adopts progressive demands on a very temporary basis and discards them once they’ve drawn in rebellious progressives—isn’t populist enough to warrant caution, but the Green Party must be held at arm’s length, even as it is increasingly coming to be led by anti-capitalist and revolutionary socialist youth? Even as it is shaping a program that truly intends to fight mass incarceration, environmental destruction, systemic racism, the war on women, etc? It is utterly absurd.
Being that SA is supposed to be a revolutionary cadre tasked with understanding and interpreting the perspectives of a diverse working class into a revolutionary program, I don’t think it inappropriate to note that our EC is composed almost entirely of cis-gendered white men who are almost entirely of at least moderately affluent backgrounds. As I’ve said, there is more to providing politically sound leadership than looking the part, but certainly there are members of SA that are capable of politically sound leadership AND have the added perspective that comes with having experienced the unique oppression that comes with being a member of an oppressed minority group. Diversity of perspectives has become decreasingly prevalent in our material and in our strategies over the past year to eighteen months; notable given what I stated about the EC’s propensity to not consult anyone outside of the EC when producing strategies. At this rate—even with the dedicated comrades in the POC and LGBTQ+ caucuses doing the meaningful work they do—I wonder how long it will be before that diversity of perspectives disappears altogether. I don’t want to use the word brocialism but… wait, actually I do want to use that word. Brocialism is the perfect word for a form of “socialism” that tries to separate socialist thought from black, brown, LGBTQ+, and women’s liberation.
“Marginal Branches”, “Embryonic Forces”, and Other Such Elitist Tripe
I was born and raised in southern Alabama. I spent most of my childhood in Prichard, a ninety percent (probably more actually) black city that is a suburb of Mobile. If you’re thinking of Prichard as a poor city in the United States, think again. White flight and deindustrialization turned this city into a hyper-Dickensian dystopia well before I was born. I think of Prichard more as a relatively well-off city in Jamaica or Haiti. Comrades that moved here from other places or have visited here are always shocked by the dire poverty that in many ways is normal to me. Comrades have found Prichard and some neighborhoods in Mobile to be reminiscent of slums in Mumbai; in Lahore, Pakistan; in Lagos, Nigeria; in Quito, Ecuador. I have not seen any of these cities so I cannot fully fathom the implications, but I notice that these are all developing or underdeveloped, hyperexploited countries and I get the idea.
Alabama is one of the poorest states in the country. It typically ranks second to last in food security; for every dollar it pays in taxes to the federal government, it receives $1.67 in federal assistance; Alabama’s median household income in 2013 was $41,385, compared to $52,250 nationally. It has some of the most regressive state tax laws and wages: Alabama does not have a minimum wage, it follows the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr but only in that the federal law overrides the lack of a law establishing a state minimum; property taxes are some of the lowest in the country, yet Alabama imposes a ten percent tax on groceries, only one of two states (guess the other one) with such a tax. The state’s education budget is constantly on the decline: Alabama’s 1901 Constitution (the longest constitution in the world) forbids passing an unbalanced budget, so state lawmakers constantly raid the Education Fund to plug holes in the General Fund. In short, this place is f*cked the f*ck up. And that’s before you consider that Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country. Alabama is even worse than Mississippi in many regards, Oklahoma may be the only state that is outright more conservative.
All in all, most people would find this an unlikely place to build socialism, but as Trotskyists we [should] believe in the concept of combined and uneven development. This is the concept that revolution can be fomented even in places with extremely backward social conditions, not despite, but because of the crushing levels of oppression and the sharp societal contradictions caused by this backwardness. The history of the Russian Revolution is a textbook example of this. (Here I would outline the contradicting forces in Russian society in the early 20th century, but hopefully we’ve all studied it enough that I don’t have to.)
In the South, we see backward, reactionary social forces more intensely than in most of the rest of the country. We also see forces developing slowly but surely to fight for system change, not despite the backwardness, but because of it. We very recently saw the makings of a mass movement against white supremacy, misogyny, heteronormativity, and anti-worker forces coalesce in the form of Moral Mondays. There are certainly more progressive places in the country than North Carolina, but very few of these places have generated a movement that has effectively appealed to so many oppressed layers in society. Again, this happened because of the social backwardness (and the conditions stemming from it), not despite it.
However, despite the lessons of history and the importance of organizing around the social conditions in the South, the EC has for years shown a lackadaisical attitude toward building in the South. By 2014, comrades from Mobile had recruited clusters of new comrades in Montgomery, Birmingham, Tampa, and Austin, as well as maintaining a branch of eighteen people (at the time). Of course, the work of not only maintaining our branch in a desert of political activity and spreading throughout the South convinced many of us that we needed a full-timer to dedicate themselves to this important work. I myself was offered this position at various points and gladly would have taken it—the then salary of $1000 a month would have been and still would be quite an improvement in many of our comrades’ financial situations. This offer was later postponed—indefinitely—because, as I was told by Belgian comrade and then acting EC member BV, the monthly dues threshold of the entire South at the time was less than the $1000 that would comprise a full timer salary. Of course, I had access to dues records for the entire nation as part of the party building team and I calculated the South’s dues, which came out to $844 monthly (which was actually artificially low because at least one person’s records reported an amount lower than what they were actually paying). A paltry $156 a month couldn’t be spared to promote the incredibly productive work we were doing, and naturally it collapsed. I’d like to think this neglect was only because of bigger priorities at the national level like 15 Now, but events in the past year have revealed other motives.
When the EC finally did get around to answering our request for resources, all we got was a wrangler in the form of RK, a Seattle-based NC and former EC member. RK’s first task in “assisting” us was pushing us to adopt a strategy identical to that of Seattle in forming a Movement4Bernie chapter. In fact, we in Mobile have spent all this year listening to Ramy push the party line on us—sometimes against his own instinctual judgement it would seem—as we argue materially why doing so would be impractical for us. Our request for resources got us a wrangler who is almost completely unwilling to listen to our perspectives; enforcing a strategy designed by Seattleites (more than half of the EC is based in Seattle) for liberal-leaning Northern metropolises like Seattle. Of course, Ramy is not the source of this behavior, but merely a reflection of EC members. In January, AA described the people who signed the opposition letter to M4B—which included everyone in Mobile, Tampa, Huntsville, and most of Austin—as “marginal branches”. PL doubled down on this at the National Convention in June. In response to Mobile comrade FR’s criticism of the EC for trying to force an irrelevant program on Southern branches, he dismissed us as “embryonic forces”. To deny us resources to build around Mobile’s (and not Seattle’s) material conditions and then call us “embryonic forces” is f*cked up to say the least. You want to know why the entire South has left the organization en masse? There you have it. The leadership could have avoided this and a slew of other resignations simply by genuinely paying heed to the needs of its branches in this politically diverse country. But no, maintaining Joseph Stalin levels of bureaucratic hegemony over all branches is far more important than actually building socialism.
The End, the Beginning
And so to conclude, I now know that I no longer have—or want, quite frankly—a place in Socialist Alternative. This does not mean the end of revolutionary organizing for me, however; far from it. I, and the other very dedicated, very hard-working members of our cadre in Mobile, leave you as we stand on the precipice of becoming vastly influential in third-party politics in Alabama, and at the head of building a radical, class-conscious mass movement for black freedom the likes of which Mobile has never seen.
Until the day I die, I will continue to organize and work to build movements around issues that are of utmost importance in building a socialist movement here in arguably the most conservative state in the US: issues of unionism and working class unity in the face of “right-to-work” slavery; of black working class struggle against an overtly racist system; of blatant, almost 19th century levels of sexism and hom*ophobia against gender and sexual minorities; of environmentalism and ending climate change in a city very much susceptible to rising sea levels; of full rights and recognition for refugees and immigrant workers from around the world; of endless debt and poverty for low wage workers, and for students facing continuously increasing costs for tuition; of fighting for these goals through the only method of truly achieving them, the overthrow of capitalism. In my particular situation, doing this means leaving Socialist Alternative, because over the past two years it has become unclear to me whether or not Socialist Alternative is working toward most of these goals anymore.
I am deeply thankful for the opportunities afforded me, the hospitality shown to me, the good friends and comrades I have made, and the sweet memories I have obtained in my four years in Socialist Alternative, but I must leave the past behind lest I be left behind with it. Going forward, I am elated knowing that we can go into this period unburdened by a self-aggrandizing bureaucracy pressing upon us a program designed for liberal-leaning Northern metropolises with no consideration (no f*cks in general, really) given to the material conditions of this area (and many others both North and South for that matter). No longer will I have to feel ostracized for pursuing revolutionary ends and working class struggle in an organization increasingly devoted to electoral politics and semi-political, well-to-do hipsters. To those I have come to know and love, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, though I may disagree with them. I hope to see you on the frontlines (circ*mstances within SA pending) someday. To those I’m not so fond of, I don’t really care what you do; it probably won’t be done competently anyway.
Peace out,
Albert L. Terry, III
Mobile, Alabama, ‘Murica
