Explicit political promotion, yeah, baby.

[maeve66]

I don't write a lot in here about the socialist group I am in. But I am going to right now. I am in Solidarity, a socialist feminist organization (we could use -- and are trying to do -- some work on the latter) founded by a regroupment (rather than a split!) in 1986. I think. I should know; I was the youngest founding member, at the time.

We're a good group, as American socialist groups go. We try to walk the tightrope in between the abyss of sectarian nuttiness and the vast swamp of reformism. Or some metaphor like that. We're small -- who isn't, these days? Except the ISO. I'm glad the ISO is big; no dog in the mangerhood here. We put out a fairly well respected journal, Against the Current, but it is not a line magazine, meaning that our elected leadership does not vote on political positions and then tell ATC to write articles supporting those positions. Sometimes we publish stuff we strongly disagree about. Our organization, in fact, was founded agreeing to disagree on a few things -- most especially (back in the day) the question of the USSR, and (still relevant) Cuba.

I think we're probably known on the American Left for being pragmatic and realistic, almost pessimistic. Sort of optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect style. We emphatically do NOT look at situations and trumpet triumphalist analyses of them. Sometimes that is a fucking downer, to be honest. But it's also ... well, realistic.

The organizations which formed Solidarity were all sort of refugees from extremely centralized democratic-centralist, Leninist, vanguard organizations. Therefore, the people who founded Solidarity bent the stick pretty far in the opposite direction, to the point that we don't really have "unity in action". If people don't agree on a political question or an orientation, it's a bit like herding cats to get Solidarity members to act in common. They're (we're) more likely to vote with our feet. Anyway, here's the exciting thing: Solidarity is entering the New World of teh internets! I mean, obviously, we've had a webpage for ages. It was redesigned a while ago, and is nicer looking than it used to be. But the really new thing is that we have launched a blog. I am on the webzine editorial committee, and so far it's been the most fun I've had in ages. Somehow it doesn't seem like an effort to write for a webzine, where it DOES seem like an effort to write for ATC... I am one of a bajillion editors for ATC, too, but I hella don't deserve it, of late.

I am very hopeful that the Solidarity Webzine will have live, interesting, and more informal discussion. I also am hopeful that there will be at least some amount of semi-frivolous, pop-cultural posts. I will do my best to ensure that.

Please, drop by and take a look. Comment if you feel so moved.

Solidarity's new Webzine, Click Here

Comments

[serazin.livejournal.com]

You know, that site looks really good.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you think so! Are you still supposed to be writing papers on microbiology right now? I feel you. I am on such an intense avoidance strategy kick right now. Ugh. I've been enjoying your journal for exactly that reason. Thanks for writing interesting entries.

[brooklyn-jak.livejournal.com]

I've only really given it a quick scan, but I like the look of it--like I would read it. And that is saying a lot because one of my big beefs with so many groups on the left is their inability to make media that people in this century might actually want to read. Thanks for passing it on. I know some Solidarity people here in Brooklyn--well okay--one, I wonder if he is a mutual friend of ours?

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Now I am totally curious. I wonder who it is? I do know quite a few Soli people in New York, obviously. Hm. Tell me via LJ e-mail?

[brooklyn-jak.livejournal.com]

okay, I will--but give me a minute because I've never used lj email before and I'm not good with the new technology.

[brooklyn-jak.livejournal.com]

okay, that was much easier than I feared. lj email sent.

[agent-moody.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd be curious who you know from the NYC Solidarity branch as well. I'm technically a member of that branch, even though I live either 30 or 70 miles from the city, depending on the time of year.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

E-mail me via LJ and I'll spill.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Sort of optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect style.

Excellent phrase. Excellent ethos.

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

I also like the design. It's bright and easy to navigate. I also read a bit of the stories, and they are good as well. I like the site very much.

However, I can't find an RSS feed for the articles. Does it have one? If not, maybe you all should look into setting one up as that really helps keep people involved and reading articles as they come out.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! It is not hard to find the limits of my technical expertise; I have no idea how to do that, set up an RSS feed. But I will e-mail web-master Mark (not my M.) and see if he knows, and can do it.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Ah. He says there is an RSS or XML feed at the bottom of the home page and on the webzine page itself. I'll go look.

[agent-moody.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I particularly like the coffee, beer, and hammer-and-sickle cigarettes icon. However, I'm wondering how this might affect the production of ATC? Nevertheless, this sounds like a good development (hopefully I'll contribute at some point.)

Therefore, the people who founded Solidarity bent the stick pretty far in the opposite direction, to the point that we don't really have "unity in action". If people don't agree on a political question or an orientation, it's a bit like herding cats to get Solidarity members to act in common.

The non-vanguardist socialist left tends to have this problem in general, and is really the main problem I have with it. Something I've oft heard from outsiders commenting on Solidarity (and the SP-USA too) is that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. This type of "reverse synergy" can be a problem.

Relatedly, someone on an SP list sometimes started his e-mails with "Comrades, slackers, and cats to be herded!"

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Referring to the ISO as large is a sign of the shrunken horizons of the U.S. far left. Compare the thousand or so members they now claim--and as an ex-ISOer I'm always especially skeptical of their membership figures--with the CP back in its day. Not even the nearly hundred thousand of the Popular Front period, when they were going with the New Deal tide, but the early membership of tens of thousands when the party first got together, under conditions of illegality. And that was when the country had less than half the population that it does today. To have an impact on the national political scene, to be a revolutionary vanguard party, an organization would need tens of thousands of active members, many of them positioned in key locations and industries. I don't think any currently existing organization, no matter how large compared to its smaller brethren, is going to get there through a linear process of individual recruitment. Which of course does not negate the necessity of building such organizations based on where one finds programmatic agreement, but requires recognizing that between now and then some qualitative changes will be necessary.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Um, yes?

I mean, I agree. I don't think the linear recruitment model can work -- Solidarity was founded on a rejection of it, that any one sect has The Truth (tm.) In our current conjuncture, I don't think that a vanguard party is appropriate, though, as agent_moody points out, a bit more centralization might not hurt. Maybe. I remain skeptical, having seen its fruits myself.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem here is that you and I are using similar words and phrases, but investing them with different meanings and contents. Unfortunately, I was up with an infant at 3:00 a.m., and I only have a few minutes left here at work, so I have neither the brain power nor the time to make myself much clearer. Just to take one example: When I refer to a "vanguard party", I refer to a mass party rooted in the working class and comprised of its most class-conscious elements, functioning in a manner similar to how the Bolsheviks actually functioned (not according to a model of how they "ought" to have functioned based on tendentious misreadings of What Is to Be Done?). You seem to have in mind something like the SWP of the 1970s and early 1980s, which is something very different.

Regroupment on the Soli model isn't going to get us there either. The socialist left in the U.S. is comprised of small groups of varying sizes with more or less tangential relations to the working class and, for the most part, confused or contradictory politics. Even if one managed to pull all those groups together, one would only end up with a slightly larger small group with a tangential relationship to the working class and confused or contradictory politics. The problem with both linear recruitment and left regroupment is that they persist in regarding the crisis of working-class leadership as an organizational problem ("if only we had more members" or "if only there weren't such a confusing welter of groups") rather than a political problem, of what the left's relationship to the working class is and how Marxist theory, such as it is presented by the left, has been rendered near useless as a guide to action.