John Throne. Struggles rising worldwide: Self Styled Revolutionary organizations in crisis

Rank and file teachers /educators throughout the US have led the way in recent struggles against the capitalist offensive

By John Throne. Expelled member, Committee for a Workers’ International.  (CWI). 

I became active in the workers’ struggle in the Bogside Uprising of 1969. I was a member of the Free Derry Defense Committee. I was the first member of what was to become the Socialist Party of Southern Ireland which went on to affiliate to the Committee For A Workers International, (CWI). I was its first first full time organizer in Ireland as a whole. 

I was also an international organizer for the CWI for some time and later its first full time organizer in North America. I was expelled from that organization in 1996. As I continued my work against capitalism and for a world run by the international working class, I drew some conclusions from my experience and especially in relationship to organizing. I go into these in detail in my recent book; “We’ll Take A Cup Of Kindness Yet”, published in 2018. I believe it has information and conclusions which are useful in this present period of crisis in the self-styled revolutionary organizations and also in the mass organizations of the working class as the leaderships of these organizations are either consciously pro-capitalist or have no program or strategy to end capitalism.  As a result, capitalism threatens to destroy life on earth as we know it and wipe out the human species. Helping to build a mass revolutionary international organization of the working class is the task of the day. 

I would ask readers to purchase my book and also read, follow and if you are interested, contribute to this US and international blog that I co-founded, Facts For Working People. My book and this blog seek to contribute to a discussion on how to organize, how to end capitalism and how to build a democratic socialist world. 

As an example of some of the contents of "We'll Take A Cup Of Kindness Yet" published before I ever heard anything about any tensions in the CWI, I wrote in relation to the more general issue of organizing:

“There is no possible way that the CWI, or its Irish or any section, or any of the self-styled revolutionary socialist organisations that presently exist, will become a semi-mass or mass organisation with their present internal life. The larger these organisations become the more differences and debates will inevitably arise. This is not only healthy, not only inevitable, but also necessary for a developing semi-mass or mass organisation. And if the internal life of the CWI is not changed to where it will be able to have a democratic and healthy internal life and tolerate different views and different factions, and openly admit its mistakes, the future of the CWI and all the self-styled revolutionary left organisations will be one of splits and expulsions and fragmentation. 

If members of the CWI want to give that organisation a future, they have to conduct an internal struggle to change the internal life of that organisation. It will take an international organisation of tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions to overthrow capitalism. There is no way an organisation of such a size can be built unless there is open debate, democratic rights and genuine faction rights, unless there is a genuine collective leadership, not a Peter Taaffe dictatorship, and unless there is an end to slander and lies. The CWI as it exists at present does not fit this bill. Nor do any of the other self-styled revolutionary organisations".

Comrades, in my book “We’ll Take a Cup of Kindness Yet,” I deal with my experience in the CWI. Some of the chapters are titled:

"The Wrecking of the CWI".
“Wrong Methods - Mistakes of my own".
 "Democratic Centralism - Cover for a multitude of sins".

You can see all the titles of the chapters in the book in the link above to the book on our blog or immediately to the right.  From there you can order the book and my other book that became a best seller in the North, The Donegal Woman. 

I would ask Comrades to purchase a copy of “Well Take a Cup of Kindness Yet" and consider the conclusions I have drawn from my experiences inside the CWI and outside the CWI. And consider the ideas myself and other comrades who work with the Facts For Working People blog now have on how an international revolutionary organization can be built. This book, as well as my first book, The Donegal Woman, can be ordered from this page at Books.ie .  Books.ie distributes worldwide. You can visit the Donegal Woman’s Facebook Page here. There are also reviews of the The Donegal Woman here.  

A video of the launch of "We'll Take a Cup of Kindness Yet" was held in Dublin at the Teachers' Club. You can watch the video on YouTube here.

I would also ask Comrades to contact me at loughfinn@aol.comto discuss our common experiences and see to what extent it is possible to work together to help lay the base for a mass revolutionary international. 

I would finally refer to a statement made by Trotsky. He wrote that revolutionaries need strong egos but that their egos need to be harnessed to the needs of the revolution. I believe that acceptance of this reality is crucial if progress is to be made. We must not let our egos prevent us from openly discussing and openly drawing conclusions from our own past mistakes. If we do then we will condemn our work to failure. This is a central problem from which the Peter Taaffe led project suffers. It is also a problem that all the self styled revolutionary organizations have along with leaderships that are overwhelmingly male dominated; the ego is not harnessed to the needs of the revolution. Instead it is harnessed to individual ambitions and part of this is the refusal to openly admit mistakes.