tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2579189847356587096.post8253866648289166701..comments2024-02-14T11:30:29.227-08:00Comments on Facts For Working People: Idealism in Trotskyism & the ISORichard Mellorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00997976754939725087noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2579189847356587096.post-24054481971882992802013-11-19T10:40:25.634-08:002013-11-19T10:40:25.634-08:00While I feel the CWI was the group that had the be...While I feel the CWI was the group that had the best approach to trade union work, and also clearly oriented to the working class, we were also sectarian. After all, we called all other groups sects and described ourselves as “genuine Marxists”. <br /><br />This appealed to me at the time as none of the left groupsI approached were capable of helping me fight on the job or with that most complicated of all struggles, the internal union battles with the bureaucracy. To be honest, there were times when the ISO comrades I ran in to were indistinguishable from the labor leadership and at times were the labor leadership. The left in general during all the years I was in the Alameda Labor Council covered for them to be honest, consciously or not. This is a major problem with the left form my trade union perspective, their refusal to wage an open struggle against the bureaucracy and their policies. This is what attracts the best workers.<br /><br />Your statements are important as they show that at last there others trying to learn from the past as we say. A comrade of mine always makes a point of the fact that there are so many more revolutionary socialists outside of the left groups than in them. How come the left has never built a left current among the working class in this country? (I am an immigrant and my experience in socialist politics began in the late 70’s.) I came to revolutionary socialism not through university but the workplace and not until I was 30 years old although I always identified as a worker.<br /><br />I also believe in building a vanguard or an organization of advanced workers. But I never saw that as something separate from the class but fused with it, born out of it. I am determined not to join an organization that does not allow democratic debate and factions and that is absent the top down elitist directorship of individuals who see themselves as modern day Trotsky or Lenins and whose participation in debate and discussion is primarily to win the argument in the individual battle of polemicists rather than raise the consciousness and confidence of the worker. <br /><br />I supported keeping issues and disagreements within leading bodies private and supporting a slate system despite feeling in my gut that it was not healthy. We all have egos, and can all make mistakes, but we have to recognize that and as a friend is always saying, we have to harness our ego to the movement.<br /><br />I look forward to hopefully meeting the comrades and others who are inspired by the ISO comrades and the points made in the documents as points that we can all have general agreement with. These are good developments for socialism and the working class. <br /><br />Thank you for publishing them.<br />Richard Mellorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00997976754939725087noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2579189847356587096.post-7218427848793400602013-11-19T10:39:08.291-08:002013-11-19T10:39:08.291-08:00Space is limited for comment so I am sending this ...Space is limited for comment so I am sending this in two parts. <br /><br />I am also a former member of the CWI here in the Bay Area. I was expelled along with four other comrades in 1996. The “official” reason for my expulsion was that I violated Democratic Centralism.<br /><br />I spent more than 25 years as an activist in AFSCME and my local, 444, which represents the blue-collar workers EBMUD, the water district in the East Bay. Along with Sean O’Torrain in Chicago, who was expelled after 25 years as a full timer for the CWI, we organize a blog called Facts For Working People which is loosely affiliated with the Workers International Network (WIN). There are a number if pieces at the top of our blog from former CWI members.<br /><br />Reading the documents from the former ISO comrades in Chicago and San Francisco they raise issues myself and others have been discussing over the past period such as the undemocratic internal life of the left groups, including the CWI of which I was a part or the refusal to reflect on our mistakes, the slandering of comrades who question etc. One example stands out and that was the line that capitalism would never return to the Soviet Union, the masses would rise up and complete the political revolution and build workers democracy. I ardently argued this view to workers on the job and new comrades. There was no serious analysis or debate in the organization after the collapse of Stalinism.<br /><br />We started a newsletter which my local helped get off the ground called the AFSCME Activist. We agreed it would be a united front type publication as my attendance at international conventions and the connections I had nationally led me to believe that there was some considerable discontent within the national body and among many local leaders. The newsletter gained support eventually being circulated to 10 locals across the country and more than 200 individual subscribers. <br /><br />We organized a caucus meeting at the Afscme convention in Chicago in 1996 which was attended by more than 100 rank and file workers, not leftists, many of them women, we formed an editorial board and were on the verge of forming a genuine rank and file caucus within Afscme. <br /><br />The CWI leadership with support from comrades here in the US decided that the AA was not a united front publication but a CWI one and demanded I handed over the newsletter and the addresses of all the subscribers to the CWI. This was purely for factional reasons. <br /><br />I was trusted by the women who helped me get this publication off the ground and helped it grow and refused; it was the caucuses decision not my organization's. I was expelled for that.<br />Richard Mellorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00997976754939725087noreply@blogger.com