The International Socialist Organization and Revolving Door Recruitment

One of our student cadres, at a time when the FractIntern ordered our party to zero in on campus-based work, was attempting to co-opt an anti-sweatshop formation on his campus in the late 1990s. He was confronted with a preponderance of members of a newly established Socialist Club, the local affiliate of the International Socialist Organization, who were attempting to carry out the same operation for their corresponding party. Rather than immediately go on the attack, he queried their politics and vision in the campaign against the sweatshop manufacturer of that university's apparel. He wondered to them how their party viewed this struggle functioning to further the cause of socialism. This entire Socialist Club chapter looked at him in confusion, and agreed amongst themselves that you didn't have to be a socialist to be in the ISO. They then went around and though all were members of the Socialist Club, and weekly sold issues of the Socialist Worker, none of them self-identified as a socialist.

Clearly, we have a brilliant organizing regimen at work. Recruit as many young people into your party without a gram of discretion, and then train them in the rudiments of the party logic through occasional discussion groups and twice-annual regional conferences which serve to repeat the same analyses of global, local, and historical events. Those that cannot remain committed to the politics, or sell enough issues of the Socialist Wanker, leave or are dismissed.

We have already discussed the ISO in our dynamically ahead-of-the-curve blog (seriously, what other party is so ahead of the curve as to maintain a blog?), in the context of the cooptation and usurpation of groups they didn't specifically produce like the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Similarly, many student groups in the 1990s and 2000s, often focusing on popular struggles like those opposing imperialist war and corporate sweatshops. They have since also become heavy hitters in reproductive rights organizing and the national fight around equal marriage rights.

But most impressively, this Chicago-based party, with few actual international ties (and thus unfortunately open to infantile gags about the "National Socialist Organization" from the anarcho-peanut gallery) has laid waste to bridges on either side of their plateau. They have frustrated the efforts of many folks, sought opportunities in other peoples' organizing, and behaved with almost feverish elitism in their pride at their size and perceived significance. They have a functioning publishing company recently featuring a collection of essays by Wallace Shawn, a periodical distributed in major corporate chains, and have a gaggle of more minor Trotskyite formations that wish to merge or else somehow steel the hidden secret of growth, including the likes of Solidarity, Socialist Action, and Socialist Alternative.

Their elitism is exceptional, for though they maintain no direct cult of personality, they still promote certain theorists and leaders as if they were left celebrities akin to the Chomskys and Cindy Sheehans and Tom Haydens of the day. On the other hand, this group almost inexplicably and consistently supports the Green Party, not trusting itself or other avowedly socialist parties who do have candidates to actually carry any elections.

Therefore, the CP(F) has been left with no other option, but full and total co-optation. We have a number of cadres in our own scattered across the ISO and its editorial boards, and within weeks (unless they somehow discover our plot) we will either have control of their organization, the Socialist Worker, their periodicals, and their publishing company, or stage a full frontal rhetorical assault on these arch-trots.

Attempting an alliance with the Spartacist League

The CP(F) has long made it clear that we like you, International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Sure, you can give us the brush-off, and spout about how we once had a wrong analysis of the Dergue or have a different position on age of consent laws. But we like you. And we want you to know it.

We like the name of your prison group- Partisan Defense Committee. That's such a damn good name, we wished we'ed thought it up first. It just sounds so bad-ass. We're thinking of starting a similar group, more appropriately named Puritan Defense Committee. But it just isn't the same. Besides, we wish we had had your foresight to take over Luxemburg's group's name, even though you're nothing like them.

And we like the way you get so militant around neo-fascist groups. When you shove them or spray them with paint, oh, what's that sensation we get? Is it hot and soft- or hard? Doesn't matter, that's just how you make us feel.

But most of all, we like your puritanism. Your articles are so polemically written, your narrow mindedness knows all bounds, and you've broken up more conferences, workshops and planning meetings than probably all of the East Coast FBI offices combined have in the past forty years.

Other leftists may call you an embarassment, but we know the truth. Y'see, the CP(F), like the Spartacist League, believes that rabid in-fighting is ultra-dialectical, and division has an ism at the end.

So, if you ever want, maybe we could go out sometime. Maybe find a nice proletarian pub, or lambast the ISO together. Or, it could be something more casual. We could just scoot our Workers Vampire newspaper-selling table at a college campus a little closer to your Workers Vanguard table. Think about it. Interested? Find us on San Francisco Craigslist's discreet encounters section.

Muah!