I've been reading _Detroit Lives_ (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1994), an oral history of Detroit organizers compiled and edited by Robert Mast, an LBO-talk subscriber. Here's what Rick Feldman -- "the co-editor, with Michael Betzold, of _End of the Line_ (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), an oral history of Detroit autoworkers, and an officer of UAW Local 900" (264) -- says in his testimony in the book: "[T]he organizational form of a Marxist-Leninist cadre-type organization in the '70s and '80s was not one that facilitated transformation. It facilitated getting things done. We didn't know how to break out of that. When the organization dissolved, the question of what kind of organizational form helps people to develop as well as relate to grassroots activities and cadre development was not resolved. These are still important questions" (269).
The remaining "Marxist-Leninist cadre-type organizations" -- the Communist Party, the Workers World Party, the International Socialist Organization, the Socialist Workers Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Socialist Equality Party, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, for instance -- do get some things done, such as maintaining presses (e.g., International Publishers, Haymarket Books, Pathfinder Press), publications (e.g., the _International Socialist Review_, WSWS.org), bookstores (e.g., Revolution Books); organizing demonstrations, holding educational forums, etc. on their own or through groups they sponsor (e.g., International ANSWER, Refuse & Resist) or through coalitions (e.g., Not In Our Name, United for Peace and Justice) in which they are members; providing staffers, organizers, and activists for various groups, coalitions, and campaigns (e.g., the Nader/Camejo campaign). So do socialist organizations that are much more loosely structured than "Marxist-Leninist cadre-type organizations," like the Committee for Correspondence, Democratic Socialists of America, Left Turn, Solidarity, etc.. In addition, both types of organizations help young activists acquire organizing skills and experiences that they may find useful even after leaving them (in anti-war organizing, labor organizing, community organizing, third-party organizing, etc.).
The work done by both types of organizations, as well as former members of both types of organizations, is far from insignificant, but what Feldman said remains true: we don't know how to break out of that. Or more precisely, we don't have social and political conditions that would allow us to break out of that.
In my opinion, hundreds of thousands of decent organizers and intellectuals exist among current and former members of both types of socialist organizations, as well as progressives who have worked with them. It would be good to create a lateral network of organizers and intellectuals who come from socialist milieux, as old ideological divides like "the Russian Question" are no longer relevant. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>