Socialist Organization

1. Solidarity, "Regroupment and Renewal of a US Left"

2. Solidarity, Founding Statement (excerpts)
3. Freedom Road Socialist Organization, “Unity Statement”
4. Jo Freeman, “The Tyranny of Structurelessness”

Regroupment & Refoundation of a U.S. Left

A Solidarity Draft Working Paper, July 2008

The opening of the 21st century finds the global working class, social
movements, and revolutionary left in disarray. Yet, another world – one
freed of exploitation, oppression, war and environmental catastrophe –
is possible, and the need to fight for that world is as great as ever. This
document attempts to summarize our experiences as members of
Solidarity and to draw these lessons into suggestions for today.

We lay this on the table and reach out to other anticapitalist activists,
organizers and organizations also desirous of a larger, more powerful
grouping committed to revolutionary change. Collective work and
analysis is necessary to generalize our experiences and gain a greater
understanding of the world we live in. Changing this alienating,
dehumanizing profit-driven political and economic system requires an
accurate understanding of our world and location of pressure points
that can create openings for radical change. Socialists need
organization to be effective. Since our founding in 1986, Solidarity has
seen itself as an organization devoted to the rebirth of the left in the
United States. At that time the U.S. organized socialist left was
approaching its low ebb.

In this 40th anniversary of the revolutionary tumult of 1968, it is

important to recollect how then the worldwide upsurge spawned a
proliferation of socialist organizations and parties, many attached to a
particular country of “already existing socialism” (whether China,
Cuba, Albania or the USSR). The overriding belief at the time was that
the revolutionary process would continue to unfold. There were
genuine differences on the left in this era, between radicals who
identified with different historical currents (supporters of the USSR, of
China, of Trotskyism, of various social-democratic trends), which led to
legitimate ideological competition between different organizations. Too
often, however, this spilled over into an unfortunate competition even
among those who adhered to the same historical perspectives, leading
to unnecessary factional warfare and splits.

By the mid-‘80s, it was apparent that this cycle of radicalization had

come to an end. At the time of Solidarity’s founding most of the
organizations of the New Communist Movement had closed up shop.
The feminist and Black liberation movements had ebbed, as had other
people of color-led movements, leaving behind a rich legacy of
leadership and ideas.

Social Movements over the Last Two Decades

The re-emergence of the civil rights movement following World War II
inspired and propelled forward all of the oppositional and liberation
movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. After Jim Crow was defeated, the
struggle for African-American freedom and self determination moved
north. Here the movement faced considerable challenges confronting
the myriad ways in which institutionalized racism is embedded in the
country’s economic and social institutions. Some militants faced
surveillance and state repression. Others were drawn into the
Democratic Party, which systematically demobilized the mass
movement responsible for winning significant concessions in the first
place. The onslaught of neoliberalism was also particularly damaging
to African-American communities in urban centers, as industry
departed for the suburbs or the right-to-work states in the South.
“Good” jobs declined. Poorer Blacks, unable or unwilling to leave cities
like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta or New Orleans, were faced
with deteriorating parks, libraries, schools and housing. Racism was
the wedge whereby social programs won in the 1930s and ‘60s were
cut, with the urban poor blamed for their deepening poverty. By the
time Hurricane Katrina hit, lack of governmental assistance, both
beforehand and afterward, perfectly symbolized the political
marginalization of urban African Americans trapped in poverty. Even in
the face of these tremendous difficulties, the political legacy of the
Black freedom movement lives on through ideas and organization.
Formations such as the Black Radical Congress, Million Worker March,
and the recent Black Left Unity indicate a desire to regroup and renew
a Black liberation agenda nationally.

For draft-age youth in the 1960s opposition to the Vietnam War was a
pivotal experience. The antiwar movement, like other movements,
began as a minority but “infected” the general population, including
U.S. soldiers at home and abroad. Many activists not only
demonstrated against the war, but studied the history of U.S.
intervention and saw the links between the war Washington waged in
Vietnam and larger foreign policy. With the end of the Vietnam War
and the collapse of the Portuguese revolution, two international
struggles dominated the 1980s: southern Africa –specifically the
struggle against South Africa’s apartheid regime and its military
domination of the region – and Central America, with its revolutionary
possibilities and the fight against Washington’s intervention. There was
the promise of the 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and
revolutionary upsurges in El Salvador and Guatemala, with Honduras a
U.S. base for launching Reagan’s “low intensity war.” Throughout the
1980s a wide range of U.S. anti-intervention and solidarity networks,
projects and coalitions sustained activity, with more than 100,000 U.S.
citizens visiting, studying and working in Nicaragua alone. A few, like
Ben Linder, lost their lives there. Many activists, including a large
proportion of women, became radicalized in this process. Most did not
come out of the traditional left.

The flowering of mass-based community organizations in South Africa

along with the founding in 1985 of COSATU, a federation of Black trade
unions with an emphasis on shop-floor, democratic structures,
produced a sustained struggle that included comprehensive sanctions
against the South African government. Along with solidarity
movements in other countries, the U.S. anti-apartheid movement grew
and became strong enough to force universities to divest and secure
passage of Congressional sanctions over President Reagan’s
opposition. By 1990 the DeKlerk government was forced to unban
political organizations and free Nelson Mandela.

President Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981 set the
stage for a quarter-century of strikes and lockouts, most of which (but
not all) ended in concessions: PATCO, Phelps-Dodge, Greyhound,
Hormel & P-9, Eastern Airlines, International Paper, the mineworkers at
Pittston, Detroit newspaper strike, NYNEX, UPS, American Axle. These
defensive struggles against corporate attack gave rise to a culture of
solidarity and a diverse use of tactics including roving pickets, mass
demonstrations, strike support committees, picket lines, sympathy
strikes, civil disobedience, direct action, solidarity tours, boycotts,
corporate campaigns and even a plant occupation at Pittston, West
Virginia. While the victory at Pittston included defying a court
injunction, the defeat of P-9 at Hormel signaled the gutting of militant
unionism throughout the industry. In general the anti-concession
battles lost because the employer had a strategy for winning and,
despite high levels of solidarity, most unions didn’t. The fight begun in
the 1960s to democratize the unions – among miners, teamsters,
autoworkers, railroad workers and postal workers -- has been pushed
back, with only the miners and teamsters partially succeeding. But
without the rank and file being able to discuss and debate strategy, it’s
hard to imagine how the culture of concessions can be reversed.

By the 1980s aggressive lending by the major banks led to the Third
World debt crisis and IMF “structural adjustment programs” that drove
millions from their land. A series of U.S. military interventions and civil
wars displaced millions more. While the U.S. immigrant population had
been stagnant throughout the 1960s, by 2004 it had risen fourfold
(approximately 34.2 million). Although some are admitted on the basis
of their professional or technical skills, most are poor people fleeing
U.S. intervention or its “free trade” policies. The new, and poor,
immigrants earn significantly less than the average U.S. worker. They
are far more likely to be found in manual or service occupations where
the job is traditionally low paid (agriculture, food preparation,
hospitality industry, and domestic work) or became low paid because
of industrial restructuring (building trades and meatpacking). While
California, New York, Florida and Texas are the destination for the
majority, the South now employees almost a third of the immigrant
work force. These workers bring social networks and, sometimes,
radical political traditions from their home countries. They have
developed new forms of organization in the face of union retreat, and
political attacks such as "English only" legislation or refusal by various
states to issue drivers’ licenses to immigrants.
The explosion of one-day strikes and economic boycotts that defeated
2006 the Sensenbrenner bill demonstrated an impressive level of
organization. As with the African-American movement, the immigrant
rights movement has attempted to forge national networks to
coordinate its struggle against discrimination at the workplace and in
the community. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) mass
workplace raids, detentions, deportations that tear families apart and
the active participation of some local police in these practices have
become a reign of terror against legal as well as “illegal” immigrant
communities. Struggling to stop these obscene abuses of state power
and recognize that no human being is “illegal” is essential.

Student activism has its own dynamics, and can inspire motion in other
sectors, but in general it reflects the downward momentum of the
social movements. At times students have organized around
specifically campus-focused issues, such as during the Free Speech
Movement of the 1960s. But unlike many other countries, the
university system here is organized on a statewide rather than federal
basis, limiting opportunities for organizing a national movement
around student issues. Nonetheless throughout the 1990s and into the
21st century, campus activists developed networks to coordinate labor
solidarity, environmental, antiwar, global justice and anti-racist
activism. Campus women's and multicultural centers, fights against
political repression on campus, and activism focused on recruitment
and retention of students of color have also been important sites of
struggle and places where young activists radicalize. Into the new
millennium, existing student formations like United Students Against
Sweatshops (USAS), Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC),
Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), Student
Farmworker Alliance, and the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) have
been bolstered by the emergence of the new Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS) as well as episodic mobilizations such as by
those around the Jena 6.

The rise of feminism in the late ‘60s forced U.S. society to change
some of its laws, many of its assumptions and some of its language --
but today’s culture wars are still being waged over women’s bodies. In
1970, on the fiftieth anniversary of women winning suffrage, women’s
demands were equal rights, the right to birth control and abortion and
the right to low-cost, quality child care. None of them have been
secured.

Although the Supreme Court established women’s right to abortion at

least during the first two trimesters of pregnancy, hundreds of laws
have been enacted to blunt that right. Most importantly, the Hyde
Amendment severely curtails poor women’s right to obtain Medicaid-
paid for abortions. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s right-wing
mobilization at the clinic doors gave rise to a counter movement
defending women’s right to abortion. Solidarity members were actively
involved. Today the right organizes periodic mobilizations, including a
two-week confrontation in Atlanta, and Solidarity members continue to
defend women’s rights at the clinic doors.

Both socialist feminists and women of color affirm the reality that
women’s reproductive needs include more than the right to abortion:
access to scientific information about their bodies, the right to
appropriate birth control, the right to chose or not choose sterilization,
the right to have, and raise, children in a safe environment. Since the
early 1980s a number of women of color organizations have been
established including Black Women’s Health Project (now defunct),
Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and SisterSong, a network.
These organizations tend to center their philosophical perspective
around a human rights agenda and are usually involved in a variety of
community issues: housing campaigns, LGBTQ issues, Katrina
solidarity work, establishing clinics.

Taking cues from the New Left's revitalization of political radicalism

and the counterculture and sexual revolution, a gay liberation
movement emerged. In the years following the 1969 Stonewall Riot,
the movement's aims expanded beyond the individual rights focus of
earlier “homophile” organizations such as the Mattachine Society and
the Daughters of Bilitis. Gay Liberation activists attacked conservative
social norms, patriarchy, imperialism and the state; their political
coalitions and language presented a common front with Black Power,
radical feminism, anti-imperialism and other left movements. By the
late 1970s, however, this initial energy had tapered; political strategy
moved from a systemic critique to focus on achieving political and
social equality for gays and lesbians within the existing the social
framework, replacing direct action with reform-oriented lobbying and
electoral tactics. While the mainstream "gay civil rights" organizations
established during this period continue to dominate, the criminal
negligence to the AIDS crisis breathed new radicalism into the
movement. Militant organizations like ACT UP won significant victories
and dramatically raised awareness of the devastation caused by the
virus; as the “at-risk” population broadened, diverse coalitions for
health care justice fought lack of access to AIDS treatment. Today a
new generation of activists dedicated to radically re-imagining the
possibilities for human sexuality and gender expression uses the
language of “qeer liberation,” much as earlier activists distanced
themselves from more cautious elders by demanding gay power.

Another movement that developed during the 1980s is the

environmental justice movement. Initiated by African-American
community and environmental activists, it expanded the
environmental struggle to reveal how the deadly contradictions of
capitalism reinforce structural racism. For example, garbage dumps
and coal-burning plants are placed in people of color communities,
with resulting health disaster. This has enlarged the mission and base
of the environmental movement.

Finally, the development of the global justice movement challenged

the institutions through which U.S. and other capital has dominated the
world since World War II. It allowed for impressive mobilizations
against various IMF, World Bank and Davos meetings, but also for a
thoughtful exposé of how capitalism creates tremendous poverty by
redistributing wealth from the poor to the wealthy. The movement was
able to attract labor and students, and was beginning to link up with
people of color-led organizations only to be undercut by the “war on
terror” in the aftermath of 9/11.

Regroupment, Refounding and the Arc of Resistance

In the decade of our founding, people on the left began talking to each
other across ideological lines, in ways that hadn’t happened for a long
time – with a common realization that the “party-building” of the
previous years had effectively collapsed, and had been abusive in
significant ways to the human beings committed to it. In this climate of
assessment and inquiry, Solidarity’s founding organizations brought
about a small-scale regroupment, initially including three groups with
origins in Trotskyist traditions, a caucus inside the Socialist Party and
one socialist-feminist collective. The project was daring for the time: to
rebuild a left socialist presence, which was threatening to disappear (or
alienate future generations), on the basis of a rudimentary set of
shared revolutionary precepts.
The basis of Solidarity’s daring was admittedly narrow. It was rooted in
Trotskyism. The idea was to overcome decades of debilitating splits
that stubbornly maintained separate organizations – based perhaps
most centrally on different characterizations of the nature of the Soviet
state, but also on other analytical, strategic or even tactical differences
– and get to the positions we agreed on. Solidarity’s founders also
looked to other developments, like the fusing of several survivors of
the New Communist Movement into FRSO, as signs pointing to the
possibility of a broader “regroupment” (as we then called it) of the
revolutionary left. Later, in 1991, Solidarity closely watched as
hundreds of Communist Party members, rebelling against the lack of
democracy in their party – and clearly inspired by the openness of the
Gorbachev era -- founded the Committees of Correspondence. For a
time, some in Solidarity became dual members of the Committees of
Correspondence. We thought that the demise of the Soviet Union
might change the possibility of a regrouped left – with those who had
looked to the Soviet Union more open to the idea that democracy is an
essential component in constructing socialism. It is difficult to imagine
a vibrant U.S. left that does not have the ability to learn from lessons
and experiences gained by various left organizations and individuals
across ideological borders. While Solidarity always prioritized having
our members rooted in the struggle of aspiring social movements, it
made sense in the 1980s to hold out hope for a broader regroupment
of the already organized revolutionary left as the next step in a
revitalized U.S. left. At our 1986 founding conference we came out
explicitly in support of these kinds of regroupment efforts. We still are.

More recently, after the limited momentum for left regroupment

seemed to have played out, other organizations – notably our
comrades in FRSO/OSCL – raised the term “left refoundation” to
highlight the role of a small but growing U.S. “social movement left” in
cohering a vibrant, combative, revolutionary force.

The two words – regroupment and refoundation – mean different

things, but the process we are looking at is actually a combination. The
exact proportion of one in relationship to the other is impossible for us
to predict. We should pursue both, and let natural processes determine
how the balance works out. Today, the social movement left that
actually exists suffers greatly because there is no organized
revolutionary movement worthy of the name. The organized
revolutionary movement suffers equally because there is no mass
social movement left worthy of the name. Each, in its future
development, is dependent on the other. We favor, therefore, a
“regroupment/refoundation” perspective which pays attention to both
sides of the equation.

The decade of Solidarity’s founding began with the emergence of

Solidarnosc, an independent Polish union and nationalist response to
Soviet domination, which was set back and forced underground by the
imposition of martial law. In our founding statement Solidarity analyzed
the Polish union as representing “the high point in the struggle for
socialist freedom in the Eastern bloc.” (Section 1) We saw its
development could point the way to “the possibility of genuinely
socialist societies without bosses or bureaucrats” (Section II).
Additionally, we celebrated the founding of South Africa’s trade union
federation, COSATU, as “the most dramatic example of a newly arising
proletarian movement with revolutionary possibilities.” Along with the
Polish and South African examples, we saw the growth of a vibrant and
democratic labor movement in Brazil and Mexico as the best hope for
repudiating debts that burdens so much of the Third World. (Section II)

Within 18 mouths of our founding, a new focus of resistance emerged,

when the First Palestinian Intifada erupted in December 1987. A
tremendous mass mobilization resting on the strength and creativity of
popular organizations – many of them women-led – in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories, this uprising stirred hopes that the Palestinian
people take concrete steps toward their aspirations for national
independence and freedom from occupation. These hopes were
defeated by three factors: the overwhelming brutality of the Israeli
response, with full U.S. support, to an unarmed popular movement; the
decision of the external Palestinian leadership to stake the future on
international diplomatic maneuvering, rather than putting all its
resources into strengthening the mass struggle; and the disastrous
change in the world political context with the First Gulf War in 1991.
This was followed by the “Oslo peace process,” which proved to be an
enormous failure and step backward because it rested on two
fundamentally false premises: a) that Israel would take any meaningful
steps to halt settlements, release prisoners and relieve the horrible
burdens of daily life in the Occupied Territories, and b) that the
Palestinian people would surrender in the face of overwhelming Israeli-
U.S. domination.

The collapse of Oslo, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin,

the re-ascendance of Israel’s hard right, and the last-minute
negotiating debacle at Camp David under Bill Clinton’s watch produced
the Second Palestinian Intifada. This stage of the struggle, much more
militaristic and less driven by popular mobilization than the first, has
taken a far higher toll in Israeli casualties but imposed an
overwhelming burden of destruction and immiseration in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories, especially Gaza. The imperialist mythology that
the terms of surrender can be imposed on Palestine by massive U.S.
and Israeli firepower has never been more destructive and bankrupt
than at the present moment.
Less than a decade into Reagan / Thatcher (but also Volker / Carter)
neoliberalism and restructuring, our expectations of a vibrant and
stronger left turned out to be misplaced. The ‘90s brought forth a
period in which not just Stalinism, but socialism, social-democracy and
even Keynesian liberalism would seem discredited by the force of an
energetic and neoliberal capitalism. The fall of Communist Party-ruled
states in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe did not open the door to
libratory socialism in Poland or East Germany. In fact the possibilities
quickly disappeared beneath the boots of a triumphant capitalism.
Reagan’s “low intensity warfare” caused enough violence and
disruption in Central America so that whatever the terms of the peace
agreements in El Salvador and Guatemala, the status quo won. In
Nicaragua a combination of U.S.-armed contras and the Sandinista
government’s inability to understand the issues of the rural or
indigenous populations led to the 1990 electoral victory of right-wing
forces. Although there was the hope that the FSLN could analyze its
electoral defeat and rebuild itself, it chose instead to build a leadership
clique around Daniel Ortega and consolidate itself around its business
interests.

By the beginning of the ‘90s organized labor and progressive popular

movements, instead of rebounding from the doldrums of the Reagan
years, went deeper into hibernation. In these objective circumstances,
prospects for left regroupment had dimmed – the forces and
circumstances needed to bring us together were outweighed by forces
that demoralized the left and drove many organizations to hold on to
what they had. The organization-to-organization regroupment project
as we conceived it stalled out, despite sporadic efforts through the
years.

Among the most serious consequences of the failure to deepen the

process was our inability to alter the racial composition of Solidarity,
whose membership was at its founding overwhelmingly white and
remains so today. A vibrant process of regroupment among surviving
left formations of the period could have brought into being an
organization with the basis for the participation and leadership of
revolutionaries of color that is so necessary to socialist refoundation.

The founding of Solidarity was the product of the actual experiences of

members of the ‘60s-‘70s generation. Whatever innovation and
departure, it occurred within the framework of a socialist left
gravitating around well-defined currents on a world scale that were the
product of the 20th century experience. Solidarity was a corrective
“structural adjustment” of socialist organization and action to the
realities of the times. More than twenty years later the challenge for
Solidarity – and the other surviving socialist groups – is starkly posed:
How can we contribute to the renewal of a socialist movement in
today’s realities?

Refounding a New Left: Next Generations & Their

Experiences

The period from 1999 to 2008 has created a new situation for
remnants of the U.S. revolutionary left and the new progressive and
popular movements. A new generation of radicals, who hadn’t been
through the experiences of the traditional left, came of age around the
struggles of the global justice and antiwar movements. They are joined
by a small cohort who came of age during the ‘90s, around the first
Gulf War and in opposition to the Republican “Contract with America.”
Many activists from this generation cut their teeth on local struggles.
They organized in communities of color with unions, around safe and
affordable housing, redefined environmentalism to include the human
rights of communities disproportionately affected by pollution and
toxic waste, fought police brutality and the prison industrial complex,
and forced queer and transgender issues onto the agenda. New forms
of organizing, including workers’ centers, arose to champion workers’
interests both on and off the shop floor and to organize the
unorganized.

Much of the most creative organizing and most of the most powerful
thinking of the global justice movement took place within anarchist
and anti-authoritarian circles. Various citywide Direct Action Networks
(DANs) and spokescouncils struggled with issues such as balancing
sporadic large mobilizations with ongoing community-ally organizing;
centering the movement around those most attacked by neoliberalism;
putting an anti-oppression framework into practice; calling for direct
actions while ensuring safety for working-class, poor, and immigrant
participants in actions; avoiding domination by a charismatic or
cliquish few; and thinking one step ahead of the police and political
and corporate elites. Their track record of successes in transforming
themselves around these issues was quite mixed, but the fact that
they wrestled with them was impressive.

Many global justice movement activists looked through a lens of anti-

authoritarianism. They rejected the politics of “social democracy” in
the leaderships of the AFL-CIO and traditional women’s and
environmental organizations as too much a part of the “system,” and
stylistically stale. Nonetheless, there was a pragmatic willingness to
work with those forces in coalitions. Based on the sometimes
commandeering and undemocratic, sometimes opportunist practices of
most socialist groups they encountered, they also rejected Marxism.
They constantly strived towards organizational horizontality, where
leadership could be rotated. Frustrated with symbolic protest and civil
disobedience politics, they put a commitment to placing struggles
against racism (and, sometimes, sexism and homophobia) at the
center of organizing, both within groups and in the world. They
attempted to practice forms of politics that would excite, not alienate.
From the beginning a tension existed between the nonprofit-based
organizations and those consisting of unpaid, grassroots activists.

After 9/11, of course, the Global Justice Movement – already getting a

bit bogged down in some of the more objective quandaries – was
effectively subsumed into the nascent struggle against the war. Again,
particularly on the West Coast, much of the most exciting organizing at
the height of the antiwar movement was in the anti-authoritarian
Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW), which shared the basic premises
outlined above.

Much of these politics continue to be central to movement-building

projects among young people where they exist, in various Social
Forums, among the Anarchist People of Color tendency, to some extent
in USAS and the new SDS, and in many campus-based worker-rights
and antiwar organizing projects. The insights and experiences of these
activists will be an important component in the process of left
refoundation.

However, the politics of the global justice movement have reached a

certain blind alley, and there has been a quantitative decline in the
movement. Some global justice activists are thinking about new forms
of revolutionary organization, while others seem trapped into endless
discussions about red and blue states. And probably a few are doing
both.

Activists carry a deep-seated distrust – if not anger and rejection – of

capitalism as an inhumane system that brings exploitation, war,
starvation and destruction of our planet. To varying degrees, they are
anti-capitalist in their thinking. With this rejection of capitalism many
also feel a need to be more than just “loose activists,” but rather part
of a whole more effective that just the sum of its parts. They have
begun to outgrow isolated, individual activism and hunger for different
kinds of organization, one that would be based around a long-term
commitment to shared work and developing a common (if not
completely unitary and fixed) political vision. This hunger was evident
at the US Social Forum.

The longings for comradeship, accountability, a better understanding

of the world brought activists, in ones and twos, into Solidarity and into
other groups and collectives. Twenty years after socialism was
seemingly discredited, a new generation is revisiting socialism and
socialist organization – asking questions from new directions, ready to
accept much and reject much.

At the same time these new generations face incredible pressure to

professionalize and /or devote themselves to their individual, personal
lives, their careers and dating lives, their marriages and partnerships
and children. The cultural and political sources of resistance to these
pressures are weaker than in ‘60s and ‘70s, when “the revolution” was
perceived as being around the corner, or at least within one’s lifetime.
Combined with an economy that carried far less anxiety about finding
a job, building personal economic survival was easier.

A socialist left is not nurtured mainly by sound theories and analyses.

Unlike the generation that founded Solidarity, today’s activists have
not experienced anything like the same level of global social upheaval
– and victories. A left is built as a reasonably-sized force in conformity
with living proof that struggle is possible, that consciousness can rise
and lead to sustained action for social justice against capital. The new
generations of activists have not yet directly experienced a compelling
and sustained political environment of this nature. Inspiring
movements do arise, but have been cut short before they get wind in
their sails. While the global justice movement was undercut by the war
on terror, the World Social Forum evolved toward domination by
reformist forces.

An organized left, if it existed, might cohere resistance, focus it, and

expound a new vision and a new practice. But in terms of social weight
and placement, it does not exist. When we speak of “the left” today,
this notion is a placeholder, an inexact way of speaking, an empty
space needing to be filled. At best, “the left” in the United States is a
project, a goal to be pursued not simply by regroupment, in the classic
sense, but through refoundation: a fusing of new energies and a
thoughtful examination and selection among old visions and programs.
Solidarity would like to partner in such a project.

We invite the broad left to think collectively about: 1) the political state
of the world, 2) the major political movements which structure our
landscape of possibilities, and 3) the tasks and possibilities of some
kind of left refoundation/regroupment which might have the audacity
to really propose a social transformation. This analysis is necessarily
incomplete and impressionistic. It is not a “line” in the classic Leninist
sense, but more of an arc (a line of flight, rather than a line of march):
an act of thinking together which we hope will clarify our project for
ourselves as well as contribute to a dialogue with others – other groups
as well as the ones and twos out there hungering for new ideas and
forms of organization.
The Tasks and Possibilities of a U.S. Refounded Left

For millions, the Soviet Union and China were what socialism in the
concrete looked like. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
Chinese bureaucracy’s embrace of capitalism in its most rapacious
form, millions have concluded that socialism has been tried, and it has
failed. Certainly those bureaucratic and authoritarian versions failed.
However the removal of this alternative economic bloc has placed new
strictures on the possibility of anti-capitalist outcomes for liberation
struggles in a developing world.
Even the exciting promise of workers democracy articulated by Brazil’s
and South Africa’s mass trade unions remain unfulfilled. Each
maintained alliances with political parties which, upon taking
governmental power, adopted a neoliberal model with an occasional
populist gesture. Tied to these parties, the unions and much of the
social movements, including Brazil’s militant Landless Workers
Movement, lost a substantial measure of political autonomy and have
been unable to defend themselves let alone pave the way for an
alternative. U.S. revolutionaries need to understand how global
capitalism is evolving, how that affects the confidence of the working
class and social movements, and how those changes reveal new fault
lines. We also need to support and participate in working-class and
community-based struggles and social movements. With a few notable
exceptions like the antiwar and immigrants’ rights movement, today’s
battles are largely defensive and local in nature -- such as police
brutality cases, attacks on abortion clinics or laws regulating them,
issues involving prisoner rights, community struggles over water and
pollution, and many local labor struggles.

In its present state, the left is almost never the generating force for
these struggles. It is far too small and lacking in social legitimacy.
However, these developments tell us that leadership has developed;
militant, collective action has been taken. It is crucial for socialists to
participate in such movements in order to learn from them, to support
their most progressive direction, and to recruit as many of their ranks
as possible to a socialist perspective in a respectful way, mindful of the
parasitical stereotype that does confront us.

Experiencing solidarity is crucial to understanding that we are not

condemned to live in an alienated, commodified world of growing
inequality. To the greatest extent possible, our small forces should do
all they can to honor and assist these fights – from direct participation,
to support work, to education on the underlying issues. Recognizing
our limitations, the left should not develop delusions about taking the
lead, although individuals among us are leaders or mentors to leaders.
In today’s relation of forces, the immediate objective is a successful
struggle that can encourage further developments.

Too often socialist groups have seen the development of a movement

not for what it is and can become, but only what it might offer in the
way of recruits. We reject this conception and affirm the need for an
effective class movement in and for itself, which requires new forms of
action, thinking and dialogue rather than repeating the known
formulas.

The left must be involved in the struggle against current wars and
occupations, demanding that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan be
brought home now. No occupation is benign! We think this moment
provides socialists with an opportunity to educate about the nature of
U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. We want to explain
how complicity with the brutal Israeli occupation underpins U.S. policy,
and express our solidarity with the Palestinian people. We do so
without illusions that the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone
the ongoing Palestinian tragedy, will end in the near term. We oppose
the U.S. empire and support struggles to close down U.S. military
bases wherever they exist. On an international scale, our
“programmatic judgments” on liberation struggles in the developing
world must be held up to the light of global capitalist hegemony. That
is, we can see some of their limitations, but it is more difficult to see
how far these struggles can go in a world dominated by unipolar
capitalism.

Despite unfair election laws that benefit the two-party system, we

believe it is necessary to build a party independent of the ruling-class.
Such a party needs to be both a participant in the social movements as
well as run candidates that can articulate a working-class perspective.
Over the course of Solidarity’s existence, we have supported various
initiatives toward building independent political parties including the
Labor Party, the Party for the 21st century, the Green Party and
exploratory efforts to build a Reconstruction Party. Some of our
members work in the Green Party that, however fragile, has been able
to gain ballot status in almost half the states and has elected officials
at the local level. In addition to its platform of environmental justice,
opposition to the Iraq war, and supports reparations, community
struggles and workers’ strikes. We think that a movement-rooted
political formation that encourages people to break with the two
capitalist parties has high priority and an unfortunately low
momentum. The capitalists have two parties, the working class has
none.

In this next presidential election, we recognize that the historic

possibility of electing Barack Obama to the presidency of the United
States is a touchstone issue for the vast majority of the progressive
community, and especially African Americans. Yet Obama is a centrist
Democrat. What is unknown at this point is whether his possible victory
and subsequent inability/refusal to end the U.S. occupations in Iraq and
Afghanistan, reverse the repression launched by the war on terror or
implement such needed social measures as single-payer health care
will demoralize those who vote for him – or spur them into action.
While Solidarity has endorsed Cynthia McKinney’s campaign in the
2008 election cycle, we realize that most of the progressive community
that votes will choose Obama either as symbol of hope and change, or
as the better of the two mainstream candidates.

Solidarity views Cynthia McKinney’s campaign as attractive to a layer

of Black activists interested in independent political action, and we
want to work with them. We also note that a small group of people of
color have joined the Green Party and several have run for political
office. Others have decided to build the Reconstruction Party, and are
also supporting the McKinney campaign. While we are not hostile to
Ralph Nader’s 2008 run, we want to help the Greens sink deeper roots
into local struggles and feel the McKinney campaign can advance that
goal. Solidarity members inside the Green Party, just as in other
movements, respect the party’s integrity and encourage its democratic
process.

Even though no “really existing alternative” to capitalism occupies the

stage at the moment, the terrifying dimensions of the global
environmental crisis help convince millions of people, including the
best of a new generation of activists, that capitalism is incompatible
with the survival of human society. A convergence of “global justice”
and environmental justice is key to the emergence of 21st century
socialism.

Refounding the Left: Taking Our Past Into Our Future

A forceful renewal of the socialist left is not entirely a matter of our will
alone. It ultimately depends on developments of a more massive scale
both here and around the world that in one way or another pose a
significant challenge to the capitalist agenda from a left direction.
These developments provide the proverbial “tests” that are supposed
to prove out the necessity for diverse revolutionary organization. Here,
in the United States, we are no where near them. At this stage, most
existing revolutionary organizations feel their fragility and place a
question mark over their possibility for survival in any meaningful
sense. The era of competition and triumphalism has pretty much
ended.

Does this mean that we circle the wagons, soldier on and wait?
Solidarity rejects this approach. Even as a body at rest, an organization
will change – and inevitably not for the better. The risk runs the gambit
from membership drift-out to downright cultification.

The process of socialist renewal has to begin now, and should have
begun at least a decade ago. Working together at varying levels, the
social movement left and the organized left together can produce a
modest pole that would be more attractive to those who do not belong
to any socialist organization. It would have a remoralizing effect on all
our respective members and networks. What forms could this working
together take?

Dialogue and study. Each organization feels the obligation to enunciate

the basic lessons of 20th century revolution, examine its past as an
organization, and relocate itself in the current realities of capitalism. It
is pointedly wasteful of our scant resources to be doing this separately.
A far richer and educational process, as well as a healthier internal
environment, could be generated by finding spaces to conduct this
discussion together. The same hold true for analyzing the movements
and world relations of forces of today. The forces of the social
movement left needs to figure out where and how they’d be interested
in participating in this discussion.

For example, too often the left’s “model” tends to drift back to a one-
sided application of “Leninism” as people imagine this concept was
implemented in czarist Russia nearly a century ago. Is this appropriate
today -- under conditions of formal democracy and with new methods
of communication, not to mention lessons from the 20th century
experience on the transition to socialism and the durability of capital?
What organizational forms and modes of operation can be most
effective in bringing about the renewal we seek? Today’s activists must
be full-fledged participants in such a dialogue, bringing their questions,
expectations and experiences as well as their commitment to the
intersection of class, race and gender.

Starting in the 1960s, significant challenges have successfully altered

the standards of internal practice and culture in revolutionary
organizations. The changes that have been brought about are
profoundly political, and address a concept of democracy that goes
beyond the requisite and anonymous formality of one person, one
vote. Solidarity’s organizational practice has been influenced by people
of color, women, and LGBT liberation movements. The changes include
the institutional existence of caucuses within our organizations based
on those oppressed because of race, gender and sexuality. These
caucuses play a role not only in guiding our external relationships to
movements of the oppressed, but also act as an internal corrective.
They help our organizations to be inclusive and capable of acting with
a collective understanding of how oppression manifests itself even
among revolutionaries, who are not immune to the pressures of the
broader society.

The stereotype of the ‘70s revolutionary organizations as being

dominated by (charismatic) males, with a heavy polemical, defeat-
your-opponent factionalism is – or should be – dead and buried. To
whatever extent it was practiced, it was an exclusive, self-defeating
model based on a caricature of the early 20th century movement.
Today’s revolutionaries are striving for what some call “feminist
functioning” – a respectful, egalitarian and uplifting internal
environment grounded in democratic functioning and pooling of the
strengths from all the members.

The ‘70s model tended to see “the party” as a thing onto itself; floating
above the members with some kind of existence of its own (often
defined by these same white males). In our organizations today, this
reification has to be combated. The “party” is the human beings who
come together to act together. They are the locus of ownership.
Solidarity has been mocked by other revolutionary groups because our
members sometimes voted for different proposals at movement
meetings. We have attempted to build consensus positions around our
founding principles and encourage members to express judgments
based on their experiences. Sometimes this has meant differences that
we have not attempted to shut those down in the name of a “line,”
requiring members to vote against their real convictions at the loss of
their integrity.

Imagine how much richer it would be to discuss – or even build -- a

21st Century internal revolutionary culture together, instead of in small
groups that are grappling with the same basic need to make deep
structural-democratic changes. Together, we could make a more
coherent contribution that could enter the arsenal of models of
revolutionary organization and theory.

For example, developments of defiance of the imperialist world market

diktat in Latin America – highlighted by political developments in
Venezuela and Bolivia, and before that Brazil and Argentina – have to
be assessed based on the current world relationship of forces, which is
qualitatively different from the global reality for most of the 20th
century. We should be taking inspiration from, and carefully
examining, today’s processes of struggle as they unfold, offering them
our solidarity. Approaching this as a broader collective will give us an
opportunity to expand our common experience and analysis.

The socialist left in Europe has experienced a similar stagnation, yet

has managed to maintain a more vibrant existence, in good measure
due to greater levels of residual class consciousness. Many
organizations are engaged in building new forms of organizations that
have something to teach us about the possibilities – and in some cases
the limits or obstacles – for unity or united action among previously
competing revolutionary organizations. These include the Red Green
Alliance in Denmark, the Left Bloque in Portugal, attempts to build
Respect in Britain and the evolution of Rifondazione Comunista in Italy.
The Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire of France has decided to
dissolve and form an entirely new left socialist organization that would
be more of an appropriate refoundational home for thousands of
activists not currently in any socialist organization. Though we do not
have the means to duplicate these efforts here – they require a level of
social weight we don’t presently enjoy – we should be watching and
discussing these efforts at left foundation together.
Acting together. We should be sharing where we think things stand
and what should be done. How strange the case that we often don’t
even speak to one another while engaged in the same coalition, the
same fight. That relic of the past has to stop. We should help mobilize
our respective memberships for greater focus on a flashpoint struggle.
Example: we often have members in the same trade union, even the
same local, carrying on various fights for democracy, against
concessions, etc. These energies should be pooled, and the tactical
arguments should be had comrade-to-comrade.

For its part, Solidarity believes that agreement around a broad set of
principles, and not agreement around historical questions, is the root
base for organized renewal of the socialist movement. We believe that
the left has yet to perfect the art of “agreeing to disagree” – while still
finding ways to act together in a coherent fashion -- once basic
agreement of this type has been achieved. (Solidarity is not an
exception to this statement.) The notion of “homogeneity” in an
organization as the 20th century left perceived it did not serve well at
all; it ended in sectarianism and irrelevance.

We believe that unity in action does not require unity of thought.

Solidarity is thus, in the broad sense, a proudly multi-tendency group.
However, there is an important proviso to this: unity in action may not
require unity of thought, but it most certainly requires thought – not
just individual thought, but collective thought.

That is, we do not believe that “democratic centralism” is an

appropriate mechanism through which such a diverse group of
revolutionaries can function effectively. Yes, there needs to be a set of
key principles around which membership is constructed. Within that
framework it will be necessary to listen to the ideas and experiences of
all comrades, and to move forward with the understanding that there
will be differing assessments and therefore decisions will be revisited.
Diversity can be the source of an organization’s strength because it
allows for a pluralism from which a more nuanced assessment may be
possible. Additionally, we believe that tactical decisions are just that,
tactical.

Marxism should be a method and not a set of formulas we have

learned from the past. We also see that the insights from other
philosophies of liberation and the living movements they spring from
must renew and revitalize Marxism.

Solidarity remains hopeful that today’s socialist left is capable of taking

some or all of the steps can lead off the process of renewal. Though
recent modest initiatives, we are attempting to bring about a frank
discussion with other organizations as well as local collective/study
groups and national networks of the social movement left on how – or
whether – they see a process of left renewal taking root.
From “Solidarity Founding Statement”
[deleted sections “For a Socialist Alternative in America”,
“Internationalism: A Politics of Solidarity”, “US Labor”, “Oppressed
Minorities in the US”, “Feminism & Marxism”, “Lesbian/Gay Liberation”,
“For Independent Politics”, and “Basis of Political Agreement” full
document is online at http://www.solidarity-us.org/foundingstatement]

Our Organization
Our aim is to establish an organization whose functioning will be
distinctive within the left, an organization that will be noted for its
democratic practice internally as well as its non-sectarian, activist
comportment in the mass movements.

We recognize that we are only at the beginning of the struggle to build,

or rebuild, socialist political consciousness in a section of the American
working class. We do not pretend to have a fully worked out strategy
to achieve this, and we recognize that learning how to build a
revolutionary organization in the U.S. will require an experimental and
flexible approach for a considerable period, as well as studying the
experience of revolutionary socialists internationally.

One of the errors that many different political organizations have

committed is to assume that they are not just at the beginning, but
already far along the road of developing a working-class revolutionary
party. This led them to posture as fully-formed vanguard organizations
—despite their small size and lack of roots in the working class—and
reject common work, much less unification, with other revolutionaries.

We believe that these would-be vanguards organized themselves in a

way that would be counterproductive for revolutionary socialists at any
time, and was especially inappropriate for the U.S. in the 1970s and
1980s. A genuine vanguard only emerges through years of immersion
in the struggle of working class and oppressed people.

Even in a revolutionary period, when its leading role is widely

acknowledged, it must be internally democratic, allowing all its
members to present their views openly, to organize other members
around these views and to change the policies of the organization if a
majority is convinced they are correct. It must also be open to the
working class and social movements, honestly explaining its policies
and difficulties, listening to and sometimes accepting outside
criticisms, adapting to spontaneous popular initiatives and engaging in
a frank dialogue with other currents on the left.

In a period of defensive struggles, we must emphasize democracy

within our own organization and openness to those outside it at least
as much. In establishing guidelines for our organizational functioning,
we are adapting the historical experience of the international
revolutionary socialist movement, notably the practice of the Bolshevik
party in the early years of the Russian Revolution, to suit our specific
circumstances.

We consider an activist membership a necessary condition for a

genuinely democratic organization. We expect members working in
the same movement to coordinate their efforts and discuss their
common problems together. We aim to carry out united campaigns in
support of ongoing struggles, making sure that these interventions are
appropriate to our resources and level of involvement and have been
preceded by adequate discussion. In all of our work in social
movements, we follow the general principle that the lowest body (work
group, branch, etc.) that can make a decision on the conduct of that
work should make that decision, and that the opinion of those most
directly involved in the work should be given the greatest weight.

Once a considered position has been reached, members have the

obligation to help carry it out. Of course, a member who does not
agree with a specific decision taken by any body of the group should
not be placed in the difficult position of being responsible for
implementing the decision; but in any event, members should not
interfere with the implementation of a collective decision. We intend
to carry out our decisions critically rather than blindly, keeping in mind
the analysis and arguments that went into them and allowing
ourselves the greatest possible leeway to reconsider and correct any
mistakes we may make.

For an organization to be democratic, it must allow for a free and

democratic internal life, in which criticism and debate are viewed as a
necessary part of developing a program for action. Just as important,
the principles of majority rule pertain, so that the decisions taken after
democratic discussion are binding on the leadership of the
organization and actually affect the policy of the organization. This
latter method of functioning contrasts both with the social-democratic
model, in which no one is bound by the decisions of the organization,
and, consequently, the party leadership is not bound by the
membership's decisions; and with bureaucratic models of organization,
in which the leadership is out of the control of a membership that is
nonetheless expected to carry out its every decision.

A truly democratic organization must be composed of activists. If the

general perspective of an organization is the product of not just its
general political program but also the concrete experiences of its
membership in the unions and in the mass movements' then it is
absolutely essential from a practical political viewpoint that its
members be involved.

Since any given member only acquires direct knowledge from the work
in which he or she is immediately involved in, the organization must
provide as much information as possible to its membership. An activist
in a trade union or an abortion rights group must be able to receive
timely information about antiwar or Black liberation movement
activities in order to round out his/her knowledge and allow him/her to
participate in the political discussions of the organization on the same
basis as every other member. An active educational program for all
members, newer and more experienced alike, is essential for this
purpose as well.

In short, the organization must create a collective experience for its

members. In turn, each member contributes to that collective
experience by being active. We will also pay special attention to
developing leadership skills and giving leadership roles to women and
others who have traditionally been denied them.

On the other hand, we absolutely reject any concept that the members
of the organization must present themselves as a monolithic bloc to
the outside world—this is one of the features of sects that most healthy
activists find repulsive. And we recognize the need to develop among
all members of the organization a sense of confidence in their own
abilities. This implies the necessity of not just tolerating, but
understanding that members of the organization must take initiatives
—not wait for some central committee in another city to hand down
directives. A healthy organization must encourage its members'
initiative and assure them the flexibility to assess particular conditions
and translate the group's general principles to practice that meets and
engages those circumstances. In contrast to the practice of groups
that present a monolithic face to the outside world, not just acting in
common, but pretending to think exactly alike as well, our organization
has a responsibility to distinguish between the carrying out of united
campaigns and the appearance of functioning as unthinking bearers of
"the line."

A leadership, by virtue of the fact that it controls an organization's

resources, has a distinct advantage in internal debate. For that
reason, the right to form tendencies or factions is absolutely necessary
to insure both a democratic discussion and the possibility that a
minority may persuade enough members to become a majority.
Furthermore, the organization as a whole must be educated in the idea
that in any given debate, frequently no one is 100% correct or 100%
wrong.
Rather, it is often a case that different tendencies reflect different
aspects of the same reality in an uneven manner.

Overcoming Some Errors

In forming a new revolutionary socialist organization, we are obligated
to examine some of the errors of the recent U.S. revolutionary left,
whether of the currents of which many of us were members or of other
sectors.

Such an assessment must be carefully balanced. While the most

important lesson of the 1970s was the failure of sectarian models of
party-building, those very failures have caused many radicals to forget
the even more profound lessons of the 1960s --the imperialist, racist
and capitalist nature of the Democratic Party—which a large wing of
the movement learned during the Vietnam war of John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson.

It is of the greatest importance that a critical reassessment of the

struggle for revolutionary organization lead us forward, not backward
to passivity or accommodation to the political institutions of the
system. Yet the very real dangers of reformist politics, whether
expressed in the demoralized cynicism of many prominent social
democratic intellectuals or the Rainbow Coalition perspective of former
Maoists, must not prevent us from examining the failures of over-
expectation and sectarianism.

In the early half of the 1970s the revolutionary left overestimated its
own strength and (more importantly) the pace at which the capitalist
crisis would develop and the working class would respond. A plethora
of small revolutionary organizations believed at various times in the
1970s that they were on the road to building a revolutionary party in
America. Put together over time, several thousand militants passed
through these party-building formations; thousands more went through
the experience of the New American Movement, which while not
"Marxist-Leninist" or Trotskyist in orientation also envisioned becoming
a mass- based party for an American socialism.

It is all too easy to focus on some of the more grotesque and colorful
features in the lives of such groups: cults of mini- personalities,
contorted flip-flops of political line over China, bizarre debates on
applying Stalinist versions of the "United Front" to trade-union and
national minority work, internal purges over "white chauvinism" or
other manufactured issues that destroyed whole groups, etc.

However, to focus on these aspects of the experience risks missing the

more important lessons to be learned from the less obvious mistakes
and misjudgments of those years. A more thoughtful approach
requires us to look at the experiences of the sectors of the
revolutionary left who were fundamentally democratic and sane in
their political approach.

The belief that our particular group constituted in some sense the
"vanguard party," or its core, in a situation where in reality the group
had only limited influence at the base and even less actual leadership
position among any group of workers, created distortions of various
kinds in our politics. Such a situation inevitably generated certain
tendencies, which were often justified in terms of "Leninist" or
"democratic centralist" norms but which more often were a serious
misapplication and incorrect reading of the actual historic practice of
the Bolshevik party in Lenin's lifetime. Such tendencies, which ex
pressed themselves with varying degrees of intensity in the lives of
different groups, included:
1. An over-centralization of leadership at the expense of local initiative,
tactical flexibility and willingness to experiment with varying styles of
work. There was a more or less continual state of mobilization—
sometimes with productive results, but insufficient opportunity to
evaluate experiences, with the result that strategic initiative became
too much the exclusive province of the central leadership.

Political evaluation often was restricted to the discussion of a Political

Committee, filtered down to a National Committee through reports,
then to the ranks via NC members and "fait accompli" articles in the
(always homogeneous) party press. The ranks, then, were trained
(often well) to absorb and defend the line, rather than to help generate
it. The bottom-up process was reserved for convention discussion
every couple of years, and-by that very token-was largely gutted.

The overemphasis on "leadership" relative to rank-and-file initiative

inside vanguard organizations was often reproduced in the groups'
relationship to the class struggle. Small groups of revolutionaries
overestimated their ability to lead and sometimes even assumed their
historic "right" to do so by virtue of their "advanced" politics. One
distortion to which this pseudo-vanguardism gave rise was the
formation of large-scale or small-scale front groups with tenuous roots
in the working class or the movements of the oppressed.

We are speaking here not of broad coalitions such as existed in (for

example) the anti-war movement, but rather of organizations claiming
to speak for masses of workers and the oppressed which were in
reality completely dominated by a sect. The front-group method of
organizing sometimes produced flashy short-term results followed by
collapse; on the other hand, serious rank-and-file groupings which took
care from the beginning to create a democratic internal process and a
leadership with a real base had much more solid long-term records of
accomplishment and survival.

2. A vast inflation in the stakes of every political debate, whether over

strategy for a union campaign or even foreign policy or theoretical
issues, resulting in a tendency for factional lines to form as a rule
rather than as an exception in every disagreement. Such factionalism
was often in inverse proportion to the real weight of the political group
in the mass movement, so that the more bitter the internal debate the
less the outcome mattered in the real world.

In Maoist or "Marxist-Leninist" groupings, all political questions were

measured by their correspondence to whatever version of the "Three
Worlds" or "main danger" theory was current. In Trotskyist groups the
"primacy of program" conception, according to which every political
difference was seen as a potential fundamental threat to the basic
politics of the organization, led to bitter fights and splits on theoretical
questions. In different forms such problems affected other groups,
such as the International Socialists, whose insistence on too rigid
strategic conceptions contributed to two damaging splits.

3. The collapsing theoretically of struggles of the oppressed into the

category of "class." If proletarian revolution was on the agenda and
building the proletarian party was the task of the hour, it became all
too easy to ignore the great complexities and multiple dimensions of
social movements. For example, in addressing the Black movement,
the revolutionary left correctly understood in general (whatever its
particular theory of the national or racial character of Black oppression)
that the Black struggle, with its highly proletarian composition, is
revolutionary in its overall thrust.

This correct insight, however, became oversimplified to the point of

regarding every strike of Black workers or every struggle for basic
democratic rights (busing, against police brutality, stopping a racist
frame-up, etc.) as automatically "revolutionary" even when those
involved did not view it in that way at all. Both Black and white
revolutionaries were prone to this error, the latter more so if they came
to the struggle from the outside. (Socialists inside the unions, white or
Black, dealing with the real struggles of workers on a daily basis,
usually more quickly acquired an understanding of reality.)

Another example was the left's difficulties in dealing with the women's
movement, which was often written off as petty-bourgeois since as
every revolutionist was supposed to know, the (abstractly conceived)
working class was what mattered. In the process the left often gave
short shrift to precisely those issues which actually mattered most to
great numbers of working-class women. Here again, members of
cadre organizations who were actually engaged in working-women's
struggles (whether in traditional or non-traditional industries) learned
important lessons which in turn were assimilated by their political
groups. But too often the views and contributions of these members
were undervalued within their organizations.

Ultimately, the hypertrophy of the role of "party leadership" combined

with the failure of revolutionary expectations could lead to political
degeneration. Veterans of the experience of the SWP can perhaps
best testify to this dynamic: a series of turns developed by the
leadership seeking keys to rapid growth; attrition of internal
democracy; increasingly, the transformation of an essential and correct
solidarity with Third World revolutions (especially Nicaragua) into a
substitution of this work for party members' day-to-day participation in
the political life of their workplaces and unions.

In the case of the SWP the incremental transformation of the party's

consciousness ultimately expressed itself in a qualitative change in
theory, towards a stagist conception of Third World revolution, and an
approach to world politics which includes defense of Khomeini's
murderous theocracy as "anti-imperialist," a retreat from full support of
Polish Solidarnosc and a general accommodation to pro-Moscow
Stalinism.

There is another, more subtle error which has exacerbated the

tendency toward splintering of the revolutionary left. We believe that
it is a mistake today to organize revolutionary groups around precise
theories of the Russian revolution. We want to be clear about what
this means.

Precision, clarity and rigor are the highest of virtues in developing

theory and historical analysis; however, lines of political demarcation
do not flow in a mechanical and linear way from differences of
theoretical interpretation. Such an approach leads to unnecessary
hothoused debates on issues where long-term discussion would be
more in order. It also contributes to the dynamics of factionalism and
splits, which in any case have been too high owing to our history of
misassessing the political realities of our own society.

In seeking to overcome this negative legacy, our new organization

brings together currents and individuals with a variety of views on
theoretical and historical questions, from the interpretation of the
Russian Revolution and its leadership to the struggle in Central
America today. We will carry on discussion and mutual education,
making no public pretense of monolithism and seeking to learn from
each other's views. We have in common that we are on the same side
when it comes to struggle: with the Nicaraguan people and their
revolution against imperialism, with the Polish workers and their
movement Solidarnosc against the ruling bureaucracy.

Because of the unique role of theoretical debate on the class character

of the USSR and Eastern Europe in the life of the anti- Stalinist
revolutionary left, it is relevant to elaborate briefly on our parameters
of agreement. It is the tradition of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,
of the Solidarnosc movement and others that will arise to follow its
example—not the regime of Poland and the USSR or other Eastern
European states—which represent the struggle for socialist freedom
and the socialist future of humanity. We will stand on this position
openly and without compromise.

Theoretically, some of us view these states as post-capitalist societies

whose transition toward socialism is blocked by bureaucratic ruling
castes and the pressures of imperialism. Others of us regard the
bureaucracies as ruling classes, exploiting the working class in a new
way, in a social formation which is a rival to capitalism but is no less
reactionary. Others of us regard them as essentially a new form of
capitalism itself, state capitalism; while still others do not have a firmly
held theory or regard all existing theoretical explanations as
inadequate.

We are determined that these differences will not prevent us from

extending active solidarity to workers' struggles in Eastern Europe, nor
from building a common socialist organization here in the U.S.

We also hold a variety of theoretical views on the nature of, for

example, the Nicaraguan revolution, which will not prevent us from
extending solidarity to it. We agree, at least, that no viable analysis of
that revolution or others like it can be made by simply pretending it is
a re-make of the Russian Revolution of 1917 in miniature.

On the question of Cuba, while united in our total opposition to all

forms of U.S. hostility and intervention toward Cuba, we do not share a
common view of Cuban society and its regime. Some of us feel that
Cuba, despite the limitations on workers' democracy, represents a
highly positive though unfinished revolutionary process with a crucial
impact in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Others of us regard the Cuban regime, in its relationship to its own

working class, to be no different qualitatively from the bureaucratic
regimes of Eastern Europe and therefore not a positive revolutionary
model. We will not seek to paper over these differences; rather, we
regard our success in building a common organization which contains a
diversity of views while maintaining comradely collaboration as a test
of the viability of regroupment.
Freedom Road Socialist Organization, excerpts
from Which Way Is Left?
The Dispersed Left in the US

The crisis of left organizations, program and theory has, of course,

affected the US Left as well as the Left internationally. Neo-liberalism,
as we’ve discussed, has aggravated the problem. The US Left is not
consolidated around socialism and has been largely unable to develop
a framework for work on common projects and a shared vision. Efforts
in the 1970s to consolidate New Left formations all, to varying degrees,
crashed. While there were particularities to each experience,1 there
were certain features that most of these efforts had in common:
• An inconsistent, and in some cases outright incorrect,
underplaying of the question of race and national oppression in
the US
• An often mechanical and superficial understanding of male
supremacy and issues of gender relations
• An overestimation of the potential for revolutionary struggle
during the 1970s (and for some groups, for every year since
then); also a corresponding failure to understand the
complexities of the political Right2
• A lack of understanding of the nature of the US political state and
the types of left organization(s) necessary to build a struggle
that ultimately results in revolution
• A failure to truly integrate an internationalist perspective into the
ongoing work of the respective projects
• Sectarianism and factionalism
• A phenomenon that Max Elbaum coined as “miniaturized
Leninism”: the tendency for each small organization to have the
features and functions of a mass revolutionary party of the
oppressed (like a newspaper) even though the group’s base and
resources were insufficient

State repression compounded the crisis of socialism in the US, a factor

that cannot be ignored and continues to manifest itself in similar yet
different forms today. Projects like the FBI’s notorious Counter
Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) destroyed countless Black left
1
See Max Elbaum’s Revolution in the Air for a thought-provoking look at the Marxist-
Leninist experience.
2
Most sections of the Left tended to look at the political Right as largely monolithic.
We tended to view right-wing movements and/or government repression as
illustrative of fascist tendencies, creeping fascism, or in some cases, the arrival of
fascism. Sara Diamond’s Roads to Dominion is an interesting look at the US Right.
organizations and individuals and disrupted efforts at unity between
various tendencies on the Left. The African-American Left probably
suffered the most from that specific repressive program, though other
movements, like the Puerto Rican and Native American movements,
were often subject to dramatic state repression that went un- or
underreported in most US media.

While there have been important developments at the mass level, the
Left in the US has made few breakthroughs. A variety of groups and
collectives have thrown in the towel. Without the support of a group,
few former revolutionaries have been able to withstand the
gravitational pull of capitalist hegemony. Many have drifted to
reformism, folded into the Democratic Party, become part of the NGO
world or been absorbed into trade unionism that poses no fundamental
threat to capitalism. Many of the remaining socialist organizations, as a
way of staving off oblivion, have stayed well within their own comfort
zones (what Mao called the mountain stronghold mentality), generally
represented by the attitude of “smaller but better,” and have
downplayed the importance of developing new theory and
revolutionary practice. Yet these organizational forms are largely
inappropriate for addressing the theoretical and practical questions
related to the development of a revolutionary movement. As such, we
are less than the sum of our parts at precisely the moment when a
visionary socialist Left is so needed.

Various efforts have emerged within the socialist Left toward unity or
regroupment.3 While these efforts have been sincere, they have run up
against several problems. We might note that many of these same
issues plague the social movements. These problems include:
• Lack of trust among organizations
• Very stretched resources among small organizations
• Mountain-stronghold/comfort zone mentality
• Lack of attention to the creation and advocacy of revolutionary
theory4
• The inability to break from a pragmatism that has folks walking
with their eyes close to the ground
• The complete infection by bourgeois individualism in the form of
cowboy revolutionary; by this we mean a real tendency to form
3
Regroupment is not the same as Left Refoundation. Regroupment’s focus is
generally on uniting existing forces and organizations. The call for new theoretical
work and program has not been central
4
Which can play out as either reliance on old theory, up to and including dogmatism
and revivalism, or it can play itself out as downplaying theory altogether and a
reliance on activity in the mass movements to spontaneously generate a new
revolutionary current.
 new organizations at the drop of a hat

To this list must be added a factor that often goes unmentioned: the
lack of a sense of what it will take to actually build a movement that
can challenge for power in the US. Specifically, a failure to appreciate
the scale of organization that will be needed and, therefore, the steps
necessary to bring such an organization into existence. As such,
irrespective of intent and rhetoric, most of the Left has become
content to build movements of resistance but is not prepared to
theorize the steps necessary to create an organization capable of
building an offensive strategy.

In our view, such an organization is a party for socialism, an explicitly

anticapitalist, anti-imperialist party rooted within the oppressed. This
means a party of the working class, but also a party that is understood
to be a representative of those dispossessed by capitalism. The first
sections of this paper described the characteristics of the neo-liberal,
imperialist state and explored the problems of socialist experiments of
the 20th century. We then looked briefly at resistance movements to
neo-liberal globalization. The remainder of this paper argues that
building revolutionary organization is a critical task at this time.

Why a party?

Questions of Left organization fundamentally revolve around an

assessment of the period, the state and the nature of the struggle for
transformation. As we argued earlier, the state is not a neutral zone
where anybody and everybody has equal room to play. The state
reflects and advances the interests and needs of the class(es) in
power, and we have noted its repressive functions, some more obvious
than others.

Some revolutionaries, reacting to the corrosive aftermath of 20th-

century socialist experiments, believe that taking state power is both
useless and wrong. Enormous mistakes and fundamental theoretical
and practical weaknesses infected many socialist attempts of the last
century. Out of this analysis comes the belief that the Left must lead
the resistance against neo-liberal globalization and force capital to
make various concessions. At some point, the masses of oppressed
people will conclude that capitalism must be transcended and will take
action largely on their own.

Unfortunately, this idea has no historical basis. Transcending any social

system has always necessitated a conscious combination of broad-
based education (education through the practice of struggle as well as
through analysis), an organization of a segment of the masses, and
leadership (generally in the form of an organization or political party).

The absence of organization effectively condemns the oppressed to

constant
resistance battles. Even when such battles are won, the danger is that
victory will be short-lived and that the oppressed will tire and despair.
Examples of defensive battles and short-lived victories abound: the
recent immigrant rights upsurge, battles against repeated racist and
anti-immigrant ballot initiatives, union organizing victories in plants
that then move abroad, antigentrification battles in urban
neighborhoods…

A revolutionary party would be a vehicle for creating conscious

organization, broad-based education and effective leadership of and by
the working class and oppressed people. Without organization, our
political ideas remain dreams unfulfilled. Why do we need
revolutionary organization? Here is why:

• The struggle for structural reform and consistent democracy,

while being part of the role of the Left, is insufficient. We must
struggle to transform society and work with others to transform
the planet.
• There is a desperate need for new theory and an explanation and
practice that goes beyond any one particular sector but speaks
to and with the various sectors that are in struggle with capital,
providing them with an overarching sense of interconnection.
• There is a need to have a political organization that has
members in various struggles linking these reform struggles to
the larger struggle for transformation. A party aims to have
developed campaigns that serve both to educate as well as
change the conditions of the people. For instance, a party for
socialism could involve itself in the struggles within the union
movement toward a new labor unionism. Such a party could
organize the unemployed both to demand employment and to
create cooperatives that can provide for survival and foster self-
reliance and self-organization among the oppressed.
• A party for socialism could build a truly internationalist politics,
educating people in the US about global struggles against
imperialism, pursuing struggles here that support people’s
movements in other countries, and fighting within the US to end
the imperialist policies and actions of the US government. The
fights, for instance, in the 1980s against South African Apartheid
and US intervention in Central America provided real support for
the forces on the ground.
• A party for socialism must be a party that struggles against
 patriarchy and for women’s emancipation. Not only has the
bourgeois white women’s movement gained hegemony within
women’s movement, but there are also now attacks from the
Right that must be overcome. A party for socialism must center
itself on the intersection of oppressions (race, class, gender,
sexual identity and choice) and deal with internal contradictions
and with how this interplay impacts the road to socialist
emancipation.5
• A party for socialism is essential to pursue the struggles against
racism (white supremacy) and national oppression. Central to
any strategy for change in the US must be a thorough
understanding of the nature of racialized patriarchal capitalism.
Playing the race card has effectively kept people of color
subordinated and the working class divided for hundreds of
years. Every attempt by white Leftists and progressives to avoid
dealing with this question has led to abject failure. Socialism
cannot come to the US primarily in a white skin; it must
represent the spectrum of the rainbow and be largely developed
and led by historically oppressed peoples. This means building
and supporting struggles for national self-determination over
land, political power and economic justice among the African-
American, Chicano, Asian-Pacific American, Arab, Puerto Rican,
Hawaiian and Native American peoples. It means fighting for full
democratic and economic rights for those peoples uprooted from
their lands and denied democracy. A party for socialism must be
a party of color.

Now we would like to pose a few questions that we by no means have

an answer to, but believe are critical for discussion amongst self-
identified socialists, Leftists, and all people interested in revolutionary
change. These are some of the very questions that we believe should
be discussed widely and collectively.

• What do healthy and accountable relationships between people’s

5
Much could be—and has been—written on this subject alone, but we restrict our
comments here to emphasize the following points. Class is not a concept that exists
in isolation from other oppressions, nor are other oppressions, e.g. male supremacy,
in isolation. A party must grasp this theoretically and practically. At the same time,
the law of contradiction is critical, particularly with regard to strategy. Specifically, at
any one moment there is a principal contradiction, the resolution of which impacts
other contradictions. The principal contradiction is itself influenced by secondary
contradictions. Thus, a party for socialism must be keenly aware of this dialectical
relationship and must not try to reduce all contradictions to the fundamental
contradiction of the capitalist era, that between labor and capital, or to reduce all
contradictions to the principal contradiction. Economic determinism has led many
Left currents to ignore secondary contradictions, and often to misread the principal
contradiction in a particular period.
 movements and the organized Left—whether parties or small
Left collectives and cadres—look like? How do we rethink the
relationship between a party and organizations of workers,
neighbors, etc., including the relationship between a party and
spontaneous action?
• How do we ensure that the organizations and/or parties that we
build will not, once there is a level of power (whether state power
or a power within the mass movement), devolve into terror,
bureaucracy and state capitalism?
• How will the fight for gender, queer and sexual liberation
construct a new kind of party and Left?
• What is the role of culture in a party(ies), and how do we create
counter-hegemonic culture in political movements today?
• Is a new kind of party prepared to take leadership from the
movements of workers, women, oppressed nationalities? How
will practice and theory developed out of those movements be
respected and recognized by Left organizations and movements?

What is a party?

Given the nature of the capitalist state as well as the necessity to

construct a project that fights for power, we are inevitably confronted
with questions of political organization. Yet there are no perfect
organizations, nor are there organizations that serve all purposes. To
better explain the concept of a party, it is useful to contrast it to other
forms of organization.

In the context of the US, there is a dual nature to fighting for political
power. There is the immediate fight for political power within the
framework of democratic capitalism. 6 This framework can still in some
significant sense be defined as such, despite its historical
disenfranchisement of those defined as not white and its authoritarian
turn under neo-liberal globalization. In a non-revolutionary situation
where the masses of people have confidence in the existing system (or
wish to have such confidence), the Left cannot afford to sit back in the
role of perpetual naysayer. Utilizing the rights that supposedly exist
through a constitutional republic, the Left, in alliance with other
progressive forces, should be mounting a long-term challenge for
political power. This would combine electoral and non-electoral means
of raising struggle. Operating within this context means creating a
6
Or, as Marx called it, a “bourgeois democracy,” where there is universal suffrage,
the rule of law, political competition and certain political liberties. The elite use the
laws and elections to legitimize their rule, but the working class can use these same
tools of democracy to advance their aims, thus threatening the very foundation of
bourgeois rule.
broad Left/progressive formation capable of operating openly and
uniting in its program the key objectives of the progressive social
movements. Its goal is the expansion of democracy and the institution
of structural reforms within the parameters of the capitalist system,
pushing the system to its limits.

This, however, is not the same thing as gaining state power. Gaining
state power represents the process of altering power relations in a
fundamental manner. Real transformation and liberation must involve
replacing the existing capitalist state. This is part of the long-term
struggle for power, a struggle that needs to be led by a party or parties
(for example, in a revolutionary front formation). However, the larger
struggle for socialism cannot be Left to the actions of a party alone but
must involve the people as agents of their own emancipation.

A party for socialism has a different set of tasks than a Left/progressive

formation. Latin American theorist Marta Harnecker speaks about a
new party for socialism as representing the unity of the organized Left
and the social movement Lefts. This concept is quite important in our
thinking concerning Left Refoundation. The organized Left refers to the
existing political formations and groupings of the self-defined Left. The
social-movement Lefts refers to the Left wings of the progressive social
movements, e.g. the Left wings of the global justice movement,
environmental, women’s, and national movements. The creation of a
party for socialism necessitates the fusion of both Lefts, in an effort to
develop what Gramsci called a historic bloc, or what we would call a
strategic political bloc.7

The party for socialism also must be firmly rooted in both the working
class and other oppressed strata, as well as in the progressive social
movements that are expressions of objectives of these strata. This
may be an awkward way of saying that it is not enough to build a party
for socialism that has a large base within the working class, if that
party is not tied directly into the various social movements that are
engaged in the struggle against capital. We say fusion because the
organized Left needs to root itself within the mass movements based
on principles of mutual respect and learning, rather than seeking to
exploit those movements.

Some lessons from history

It is useful to briefly review (since a full explanation requires a

separate book!) some of the critical lessons that one can draw from
7
A historic bloc or strategic political bloc is broader than any one party. Yet, as we
pointed out earlier, the party has as its role the building of such a bloc if it ever
wishes to gain power.
various revolutionary Left experiences in the 20th century when
thinking about the task of creating a party for socialism:

• We need to engage in critical summation. While Marxism serves

as a guide to theory and practice, it does not provide the answer to
each and every question confronting humanity. Marxism, for instance,
does not have a theory of the personality, and never set out to have
one. Nevertheless, historical materialism and materialist dialectics22
provide a means to identify and answer many of the complicated
questions facing the social movements. Historical materialism serves
as a social science that, as with other social sciences, does not provide
ready-made answers but does provide a means to grapple with the
questions. Practice and critical summation over time lay the foundation
for conclusions. Parties that believe they are omnipotent and
omniscient are parties on the road to self-destruction.
• Democracy serves as both a goal and a practice. Democracy
cannot be an abstraction; it must be built into the process of
revolutionary struggle. This paper has looked at some exciting new
developments in this area. They remind us that democracy cannot be
something that is put off to a distant future but must be demonstrated
in practice. A party’s openness to criticism and its accountability
between and among all levels (often called democratic centralism) are
essential to ensure against cultism and stagnation. This approach is
important in addressing some of the damning criticisms of Left-wing
parties—particularly communist parties—that gain power and then
move in an authoritarian direction. Democracy must be built into
revolutionary practice from the inception.
• There is not necessarily one organization for each class.
Orthodox Marxism-Leninism has argued that since there exists only
one class interest within the working class there must be only one
party. This formulation is idealist and problematic. Capitalism
(particularly neo-liberalism) constantly reshapes the material realities
working people face across the globe. In turn, the working class is
constantly remaking itself. This means that there are constantly
changing contradictions within classes that cannot all be handled in
the same manner. While the party for socialism should be strongly
rooted within the working class, it should not see itself as the sole
voice for that class. There may be contending socialist parties, there
may be united fronts, or there may be one party. Thus, the form of a
revolutionary party can never be cast in stone. It changes depending
on material conditions. Whatever the configuration, room must exist
for the creation of new formations, particularly under socialism, that
challenge bureaucratization of the party and any tendencies toward
the development of new oppressive classes. Thus, in addition to the
potential for other parties, independent grassroots organizations and
social movements are essential for the vitality of a socialist project.
• There is a constant need to revolutionize organizations. This
need exists irrespective of the period. It includes leadership
development (emphasizing working-class women of color and building
organizational models where they can lead as women); the personal
development of individuals; the creation of new social relations that
liberate individuals (and help heal those traumatized and wounded by
capitalism); the struggle against bureaucracy; and the struggle against
racism/chauvinism, sexism,8 the gender binary, heterosexism, and
class privilege. These struggles, at least until the distant future, are
never completely won.

There are structural steps that can be introduced or at least

considered, such as term limits for leadership (like the rotation of
leaders over a reasonable period of time), commissions that develop
theory and advocate for the issues of specific constituencies, full
internal debate (assuming we’re not operating under conditions of
severe repression), percentages of traditionally excluded groups on
leading bodies, and regular education on the issues.
• The creation of theory is essential. The creation and advocacy of
revolutionary theory is central to the existence of a revolutionary Left
and revolutionary organization. When theory stagnates, strategy
falters. Actual experience must guide the development and evaluation
of theory—not just the experiences of one organization, but of various
organizations over a period. The creation of theory is more than simply
reading what others have written and translating that into US
conditions. It means that the Left must commission its own
theoreticians to develop theory relative to both the US and to the
world. This means, among other things, that there must be latitude for
differences of opinion and even heresy.
• It’s important to recognize other revolutionary currents even
if they
are from another political/ideological tradition. This is related,
but not identical, to the earlier point regarding multi-party socialism.
The Left, particularly the communist Left, has often seen the
legitimacy of only its own revolutionary tradition. In the US, for
instance, too many Leftists who have benefited from white, male,
heterosexist and other forms of privilege have seen the Left as largely
themselves and have ignored other radical traditions, especially from
the movements of people of color. To some extent this
blindness/dismissal contributed to the rise of identity politics, where

8
Historical materialism/materialist dialectics are the theoretical and methodological
foundations
of Marxism, a study of how change happens as well as an understanding of how
material
circumstances shape relationships between people and classes and ultimately the
historical development of humanity.
individual movements not only sought legitimacy, but also
disconnected these currents from other social movements.
• Revolutionary fronts can be one vehicle for pursuing the
struggle for socialism, or they can be transitional. The
experiences in Latin America, particularly with the Salvadoran
Farabundo Martí National Liberation front (FMLN) and the Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua, offered a particularly
interesting approach toward building unity between political
tendencies that had at various moments quite literally been at war
with one another. In both cases these fronts transitioned into political
parties. That may be a method to be considered in the US.

So, Where Do We Go from Here?

The notion of Left Refoundation and party building brings with it a need
to think even more deeply about the approach toward constructing a
party. Here are a few assumptions and proposals.

• Despite the absolute need for a party of socialism, short of

unusual circumstances we are a long way off from a genuine
party. By genuine we mean a party that has thousands of
members and a significant dedicated core (cohesive element, to
use Gramsci’s phrase). Ultimately, we need to be thinking in
terms of a party of hundreds of thousands of members.
• This means, among other things, that those forces committed to
the building of a party must themselves have roots in
progressive social movements and mass struggles. This does not
mean, however, that any one pre-party organization or formation
can or should assume that it will be in all such movements and
struggles. In such movements, however, the revolutionary Left
must identify real mass leaders and win them to socialism. It
means that the revolutionary Left is struggling to strengthen the
progressive social movements, particularly by building the
united-front character of these movements. The Left within those
social movements, some of whom may be involved in the
building of a party, would have tasks specific to those social
movements, and the revolutionary Left must be a part of
supporting this work. The revolutionary Left must be learning
from the experiences within these movements and summarizing
the practice on the level of theory. That theory can in return
support these movements and serve as a component of the
overall theory for the construction of a socialist project in this
country.
• There is a need for intermediate steps that can place the US Left
in the position to create such a party. Intermediate steps might
 mean a front—as mentioned earlier—or some other sort of
transitional organization(s).
• The construction of a party for socialism must begin with
agreement on the actual situation (domestically and globally),
along with agreement on the minimum conditions or points of
unity necessary in order to have a principled, working
organization. This means that there must be agreement that
some matters will not be settled in the immediate, though a
process might be established to work them through.
• No one organization will simply grow in size and become the
party. Building a party will require a conscious coming together
of forces on the revolutionary Left and will not happen
spontaneously.
• Ideally, a group of organizations from both the organized and
social movement Lefts would agree to host a Left-rebuilding
initiative. Some efforts in this direction have been attempted but
have not succeeded.

Our conclusion from this is that insufficient trust existed between

organizations in order for them to place time and resources into such a
project, or to engage their own base in the idea. Additionally, there is
often a lack of urgency. These efforts also seemed to come undone in
part due to different views on how a party can and should come about.
One classic example of this was referenced earlier, i.e., an almost
evolutionist view that a party will spontaneously emerge from mass
struggle when conditions are ripe. Thus, there is no need to develop a
strategy for party building because when the time is right, it will rise.
For these and other reasons we have concluded that party building
must be driven from below.

• Left Refoundation assumes much more than the unification of

existing organizations in the organized and social-movement
Lefts. It proposes that there must be a process to bring forward
and develop the leadership of new Leftists who may never have
been part of any organization. It also means building political and
organizational unity with those Leftists who view themselves as
being solitary and not part of any organization or current. Finally
it means moving to unity with the various forms of collectives
and study groups that are springing up out of the various
movements. We must ensure revolutionary diversity by race,
nationality, gender and class composition in order to succeed.
This means bringing forward the real leaders of the social
movements, as well as identifying organizational forms that
promote full participation and eventual unification.
From this, we would suggest:

• Organizational alliances: Organizations that share a common

vision toward the construction of a party for socialism, or even
simply the strengthening of the revolutionary Left, but which are
not prepared to unite should forge alliances. We envision these
alliances taking place among and between the organized Left
and social-movement Lefts. Such alliances should be formal
agreements to work on common projects, share information, and
offer support to one another where possible. Obviously, if there is
sufficient unity to merge, that should be done. These options are
not in contradiction.
• Promotion of debate: There are a number of existing vehicles
that can act as a mechanism for debate and exchange among
Leftists. These forums, some of which may evolve out of a Left
Refoundation–type process, can provide news and analysis
regarding issues that are otherwise ignored. In other words, it
can be a mechanism to move broad discussions and debates
within the organized and social-movement Lefts. Debate can also
include:
o Formal debates: The Brecht Forum in New York and the
Center for Political Education in San Francisco regularly
hold debates and discussions on issues of concern to
Leftists. Most locales, urban and rural, lack these
institutions. Debates on issues ranging from the question
of the party to global warming must be taken on the road.
o Study/discussion groups: There is a desperate need for
venues in which Leftists can study and dialogue and
ultimately take practical action. Groups need to use all
forms of education (visual, oral, and hands-on), so that all
types of learners can play an equal part. These groups can
help to create the conditions for new forms of organization.
o Local social investigation, planning and activity: The
Left typically involves itself in defensive coalitions and joint
work around a specific problem. Some Leftists believe that
by doing this, unity will spontaneously emerge. There is
little evidence to support this idea. Only conscious effort
brings unity. We suggest that Leftists who have some level
of principled unity within a specific geographic area come
together to (a) conduct an analysis of the state of the class
struggle in that area; (b) identify points where a coherent
Left could make a difference in building, strengthening,
etc., a struggle; and (c) agree upon projects or points of
concentration. These efforts are building blocks for the
revival of revolutionary politics.
• Strengthening the social-movement Lefts: Part of our work
must be to reinforce the social-movement Lefts, not simply in
their relationship to party building, but as independent forces in
their own right. The social movement Lefts are quite diverse
ideologically. Revolutionary Marxists have an obligation to
approach the social-movement Lefts as comrades but not with
the immediate, or in some cases long-term, prospect of
unification. FRSO/OSCL, for instance, has worked very closely
with African-American revolutionary nationalists where both
sides agreed that there was no prospect of unification, but where
a close relationship was useful in order to advance the work. This
approach is important with all social-movement Lefts.
• Building national, real-world project(s): It is important for
Left formations and individuals to engage in national-level
projects. Such projects should not be fanciful inventions just to
bring us together, but should be based on an analysis of real-
world events and the manner in which the Left can both
contribute to and gain from active participation. This breaks
down the sense of isolation that so often haunts the movement.
But it also demonstrates the impact that the Left can have on
real-world events. The Jesse Jackson Presidential campaigns of
1984 and especially 1988 were interesting examples of where
the Left did have considerable impact. Individual Leftists played
prominent roles in the campaign, including developing positions
(platforms) and organizing constituencies that might otherwise
have failed to engage with the campaign. In some cases, forces
from different Left groupings were able to work together to build
the campaigns in their areas. Had the Left been more united, we
would have had a more significant impact.
• Building international Left cooperation and solidarity:
Regularly ignored in the US by most of the Left is the question of
international solidarity within the global revolutionary Left. This
is not a call for the creation of a new Communist International or
similar formation, but there are interesting global dialogues
unfolding that are bringing together forces that might not
otherwise interact. The Sao Paulo Forum, for instance, brings
together a cross-section of the Latin American Left. The World
Social Forum has shown itself to be a very useful meeting
ground. Within the international trade union movement, there
havebeen South-South dialogues between the Congress of South
African Trade Unions, the Brazilian Central Única dos
Trabalhadores, and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions—
unions either led by Leftists or where the Left plays a major role.
For us in the US, we need to look at such global interactions as
an opportunity to learn from other experiences, strategize in
addressing issues of common concern, and educate our
 respective members and base concerning issues facing
oppressed people internationally so that we can build a stronger
domestic movement against US imperialism. We should discuss
building a movement in the US against empire that can be seen
as part of an international united front against imperialism with
the US as the main enemy.
• Going multi-generational: The notion that every generation
needs to start over and create its own organizations carries
major weight. It is, nevertheless, problematic. There is immense
knowledge and experience that crosses generational lines. Left
Refoundation, as we have reiterated, is not solely or mainly
about the coming together of existing organizations. It is about
laying the conditions for the revitalization of the revolutionary
Left and the building of a party for socialism. It requires that
older organizations and activists be open to listening to and
following the initiatives of newer formations and younger
activists—something that has proven difficult for many. This will
mean a continuous process of cultural change, a cultural
revolution so to speak, as different age groups lend their voices
to the process of rebuilding the revolutionary Left.
Jodeen Freeman, The Tyranny of Structurelessness
During the years in which the women’s liberation movement has been
taking shape, a great emphasis has been placed on what are called
leaderless, structureless groups as the main — if not sole —
organizational form of the movement. The source of this idea was a
natural reaction against the overstructured society in which most of us
found ourselves, the inevitable control this gave others over our lives,
and the continual elitism of the Left and similar groups among those
who were supposedly fighting this overstructuredness.

The idea of “structurelessness,” however, has moved from a healthy

counter to those tendencies to becoming a goddess in its own right.
The idea is as little examined as the term is much used, but it has
become an intrinsic and unquestioned part of women’s liberation
ideology. For the early development of the movement this did not
much matter. It early defined its main goal, and its main method, as
consciousness-raising, and the “structureless rap group” was an
excellent means to this end. The looseness and informality of
it encouraged participation in discussion, and its often supportive
atmosphere elicited personal insight. If nothing more concrete than
personal insight ever resulted from these groups, that did not much
matter, because their purpose did not really extend beyond this.

The basic problems didn’t appear until individual rap groups exhausted
the virtues of consciousness-raising and decided they wanted to do
something more specific. At this point they usually floundered because
most groups were unwilling to change their structure when they
changed their tasks. Women had thoroughly accepted the idea of
“structurelessness” without realizing the limitations of its uses. People
would try to use the “structureless” group and the informal conference
for purposes for which they were unsuitable out of a blind belief that
no other means could possibly be anything but oppressive.

If the movement is to grow beyond these elementary stages of

development, it will have to disabuse itself of some of its prejudices
about organization and structure. There is nothing inherently bad
about either of these. They can be and often are misused, but to reject
them out of hand because they are misused is to deny ourselves the
necessary tools to further development. We need to understand why
“structurelessness” does not work.

Formal and Informal Structures

Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a
“structureless” group. Any group of people of whatever nature that
comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably
structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may
vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and
resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed
regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people
involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents,
predispositions, and backgrounds, makes this inevitable. Only if we
refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we
approximate structurelessness — and that is not the nature of a
human group.

This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as

deceptive, as to aim at an “objective” news story, “value-free” social
science, or a “free” economy. A “laissez faire” group is about as
realistic as a “laissez faire” society; the idea becomes a smokescreen
for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over
others. This hegemony can soeasily be established because the idea of
“structurelessness” does not prevent the formation of informal
structures, only formal ones. Similarly “laissez faire” philosophy did not
prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over
wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the
government from doing so. Thus structurelessness becomes a way of
masking power, and within the women’s movement it is usually most
strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they
are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the
group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only
to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the
rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for
initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions
that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.

For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group

and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not
implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to
everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized. This is not
to say that formalization of a structure of a group will destroy the
informal structure. It usually doesn’t. But it does hinder the informal
structure from having predominant control and makes available some
means of attacking it if the people involved are not at least responsible
to the needs of the group at large. “Structurelessness” is
organizationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a
structured or structureless group, only whether or not to have
aformally structured one. Therefore the word will not be used any
longer except to refer to the idea it represents. “Unstructured” will
refer to those groups which have not been deliberately structured in a
particular manner. “Structured” will refer to those which have. A
structured group always has formal structure, and may also have an
informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in
unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites.

The Nature of Elitism

“Elitist” is probably the most abused word in the women’s liberation
movement. It is used as frequently, and for the same reasons, as
“pinko” was used in the fifties. It is rarely used correctly. Within the
movement it commonly refers to individuals, though the personal
characteristics and activities of those to whom it is directed may differ
widely. An individual, as an individual, can never be an elitist, because
the only proper application of the term “elite” is to groups. Any
individual, regardless of how well-known that person may be, can
never be an elite.

Correctly, an elite refers to a small group of people who have power

over a larger group of which they are part, usually without direct
responsibility to that larger group, and often without their knowledge
or consent. A person becomes an elitist by being part of, or advocating
the rule by, such a small group, whether or not that individual is
well known or not known at all. Notoriety is not a definition of an elitist.
The most insidious elites are usually run by people not known to the
larger public at all. Intelligent elitists are usually smart enough not to
allow themselves to become well known; when they become known,
they are watched, and the mask over their power is no longer firmly
lodged.

Elites are not conspiracies. Very seldom does a small group of people
get together and deliberately try to take over a larger group for its own
ends. Elites are nothing more, and nothing less, than groups of friends
who also happen to participate in the same political activities. They
would probably maintain their friendship whether or not they were
involved in political activities; they would probably be involved in
political activities whether or not they maintained their friendships. It is
the coincidence of these two phenomena which creates elites in any
group and makes them so difficult to break.

These friendship groups function as networks of communication

outside any regular channels for such communication that may have
been set up by a group. If no channels are set up, they function as
the only networks of communication. Because these people are
friends, because they usually share the same values and orientations,
because they talk to each other socially and consult with each other
when common decisions have to be made, the people involved in
these networks have more power in the group than those who don’t.
And it is a rare group that does not establish some informal networks
of communication through the friends that are made in it.
Some groups, depending on their size, may have more than one such
informal communications network. Networks may even overlap. When
only one such network exists, it is the elite of an otherwise
unstructured group, whether the participants in it want to be elitists or
not. If it is the only such network in a structured group it may or may
not be an elite depending on its composition and the nature of the
formal structure. If there are two or more such networks of friends,
they may compete for power within the group, thus forming factions,
or one may deliberately opt out of the competition, leaving the other
as the elite. In a structured group, two or more such friendship
networks usually compete with each other for formal power. This is
often the healthiest situation, as the other members are in a position
to arbitrate between the two competitors for power and thus to make
demands of those to whom they give their temporary allegiance.
The inevitably elitist and exclusive nature of informal communication
networks of friends is neither a new phenomenon characteristic of the
women’s movement nor a phenomenon new to women. Such informal
relationships have excluded women for centuries from participating in
integrated groups of which they were a part. In any profession or
organization these networks have created the “locker room” mentality
and the “old school” ties which have effectively prevented women as a
group (as well as some men individually) from having equal access to
the sources of power or social reward. Much of the energy of past
women’s movements has been directed to having the structures of
decision-making and the selection processes formalized so that the
exclusion of women could be confronted directly. As we well know,
these efforts have not prevented the informal male-only networks from
discriminating against women, but they have made it more difficult.

Because elites are informal does not mean they are invisible. At any
small group meeting anyone with a sharp eye and an acute ear can tell
who is influencing whom. The member of a friendship group will relate
more to each other than to other people. They listen more
attentively, and interrupt less; they repeat each other’s points and give
in amiably; they tend to ignore or grapple with the
“outs” whose approval is not necessary for making a decision. But it is
necessary for the “outs” to stay on good terms with the “ins.” Of
course the lines are not as sharp as I have drawn them. They are
nuances of interaction, not prewritten scripts. But they are discernible,
and they do have their effect. Once one knows with whom it is
important to check before a decision is made, and whose approval is
the stamp of acceptance, one knows who is running things.

Since movement groups have made no concrete decisions about who

shall exercise power within them, many different criteria are used
around the country. Most criteria are along the lines of traditional
female characteristics. For instance, in the early days of the
movement, marriage was usually a prerequisite for participation in the
informal elite. As women have been traditionally taught, married
women relate primarily to each other, and look upon single women as
too threatening to have as close friends. In many cities, this criterion
was further refined to include only those women married to New Left
men. This standard had more than tradition behind it, however,
because New Left men often had access to resources needed by the
movement — such as mailing lists, printing presses, contacts, and
information — and women were used to getting what they needed
through men rather than independently. As the movement has
changed through time, marriage has become a less universal criterion
for effective participation, but all informal elites establish standards by
which only women who possess certain material or personal
characteristics may join. They frequently include: middle-class
background (despite all the rhetoric about relating to the working
class); being married;not being married but living with someone; being
or pretending to be a lesbian; being between the ages of twenty and
thirty; being college educated or at least having some college
background; being “hip”; not being too “hip”; holding a certain political
line or identification as a “radical”; having children or at least liking
them; not having children; having certain “feminine” personality
characteristics such as being “nice”; dressing right (whether in the
traditional style or the antitraditional style); etc. There are also some
characteristics which will almost always tag one as a “deviant” who
should not be related to. They include: being too old; working full-
time, particularly if one is actively committed to a “career”; not being
“nice”; and being avowedly single (i.e. neither heterosexual nor
homosexual).

Other criteria could be included, but they all have common themes.
The characteristics prerequisite for participating in the informal elites
of the movement, and thus for exercising power, concern one’s
background, personality, or allocation of time. They do not include
one’s competence, dedication to feminism, talents, or potential
contribution to the movement. The former are the criteria one usually
uses in determining one’s friends. The latter are what any movement
or organization has to use if it is going to be politically effective.

The criteria of participation may differ from group to group, but the
means of becoming a member of the informal elite if one meets those
criteria are pretty much the same. The only main difference depends
on whether one is in a group from the beginning, or joins it after it has
begun. If involved from the beginning it is important to have as many
of one’s personal friends as possible also join. If no one knows anyone
else very well, then one must deliberately form friendships with a
select number and establish the informal interaction patterns crucial to
the creation of an informal structure. Once the informal patterns are
formed they act to maintain themselves, and one of the most
successful tactics of maintenance is to continuously recruit new people
who “fit in.” One joins such an elite much the same way one pledges a
sorority. If perceived as a potential addition, one is “rushed” by the
members of the informal structure and eventually either dropped or
initiated. If the sorority is not politically aware enough to actively
engage in this process itself it can be started by the outsider pretty
much the same way one joins any private club. Find a sponsor, i.e.,
pick some member of the elite who appears to be well respected within
it, and actively cultivate that person’s friendship. Eventually, she will
most likely bring you into the inner circle.

All of these procedures take time. So if one works full time or has a
similar major commitment, it is usually impossible to join simply
because there are not enough hours left to go to all the meetings and
cultivate the personal relationships necessary to have a voice in the
decision-making. That is why formal structures of decision-making are
a boon to the overworked person. Having an established process for
decision-making ensures that everyone can participate in it to some
extent.

Although this dissection of the process of elite formation within small

groups has been critical in perspective, it is not made in the belief that
these informal structures are inevitably bad — merely that they are
inevitable. All groups create informal structures as a result of
interaction patterns among the members of the group. Such informal
structures can do very useful things. But only unstructured groups are
totally governed by them. When informal elites are combined with a
myth of “structurelessness,” there can be no attempt to put limits on
the use of power. It becomes capricious.

This has two potentially negative consequences of which we should be

aware. The first is that the informal structure of decision-making will
be much like a sorority — one in which people listen to others because
they like them and not because they say significant things. As long as
the movement does not do significant things this does not much
matter. But if its development is not to be arrested at this preliminary
stage, it will have to alter this trend. The second is that informal
structures have no obligation to be responsible to the group at large.
Their power was not given to them; it cannot be taken away. Their
influence is not based on what they do for the group; therefore they
cannot be directly influenced by the group. This does not necessarily
make informal structures irresponsible. Those who are concerned with
maintaining their influence will usually try to be responsible. The group
simply cannot compel such responsibility; it is dependent on the
interests of the elite.

The “Star” System

The idea of “structurelessness” has created the “star” system. We live
in a society which expects political groups to make decisions and to
select people to articulate those decisions to the public at large. The
press and the public do not know how to listen seriously to individual
women as women; they want to know how the group feels. Only three
techniques have ever been developed for establishing mass group
opinion: the vote or referendum, the public opinion survey
questionnaire, and the selection of group spokespeople at an
appropriate meeting. The women’s liberation movement has used
none of these to communicate with the public. Neither the movement
as a whole nor most of the multitudinous groups within it have
established a means of explaining their position on various issues. But
the public is conditioned to look for spokespeople.

While it has consciously not chosen spokespeople, the movement has

thrown up many women who have caught the public eye for varying
reasons. These women represent no particular group or established
opinion; they know this and usually say so. But because there are no
official spokespeople nor any decision-making body that the press
can query when it wants to know the movement’s position on a
subject, these women are perceived as the spokespeople. Thus,
whether they want to or not, whether the movement likes it or not,
women of public note are put in the role of spokespeople by default.

This is one source of the ire that is often felt towards the women who
are labeled “stars.” Because they were not selected by the women in
the movement to represent the movement’s views, they are resented
when the press presumes that they speak for the movement. But as
long as the movement does not select its own spokeswomen, such
women will be placed in that role by the press and the public,
regardless of their desires.

This has several negative consequences for both the movement and
the women labeled “stars.” First, because the movement didn’t put
them in the role of spokesperson, the movement cannot remove them.
The press put them there and only the press can choose not to listen.
The press will continue to look to “stars” as spokeswomen as long as it
has no official alternatives to go to for authoritative statements from
the movement. The movement has no control in the selection of its
representatives to the public as long as it believes that it should have
no representatives at all. Second, women put in this position often find
themselves viciously attacked by their sisters. This achieves nothing
for the movement and is painfully destructive to the individuals
involved. Such attacks only result in either the woman leaving the
movement entirely — often bitterly alienated — or in her ceasing to
feel responsible to her “sisters.” She may maintain some loyalty to the
movement, vaguely defined, but she is no longer susceptible to
pressures from other women in it. One cannot feel responsible to
people who have been the source of such pain without being a
masochist, and these women are usually too strong to bow to that kind
of personal pressure. Thus the backlash to the “star” system in effect
encourages the very kind of individualistic nonresponsibility that the
movement condemns. By purging a sister as a “star,” the movement
loses whatever control it may have had over the person who then
becomes free to commit all of the individualistic sins of which she has
been accused.

Political Impotence
Unstructured groups may be very effective in getting women to talk
about their lives; they aren’t very good for getting things done. It is
when people get tired of “just talking” and want to do something more
that the groups flounder, unless they change the nature of
their operation. Occasionally, the developed informal structure of the
group coincides with an available need that the group can fill in such a
way as to give the appearance that an unstructured group “works.”
That is, the group has fortuitously developed precisely the kind of
structure best suited for engaging in a particular project.

While working in this kind of group is a very heady experience, it is

also rare and very hard to replicate. There are almost inevitably four
conditions found in such a group:

1) It is task oriented. Its function is very narrow and very specific, like
putting on a conference or putting out a newspaper. It is the task that
basically structures the group. The task determines what needs to be
done and when it needs to be done. It provides a guide by which
people can judge their actions and make plans for future activity.

2) It is relatively small and homogeneous. Homogeneity is necessary

to ensure that participants have a “common language” or interaction.
People from widely different backgrounds may provide richness to a
consciousness-raising group where each can learn from the others’
experience, but too great a diversity among members of a task-
oriented group means only that they continually misunderstand each
other. Such diverse people interpret words and actions differently.
They have different expectations about each other’s behavior and
judge the results according to different criteria. If everyone knows
everyone else well enough to understand the nuances, these can be
accommodated. Usually, they only lead to confusion and endless hours
spent straightening out conflicts no one ever thought would arise.

3) There is a high degree of communication. Information must be

passed on to everyone, opinions checked, work divided up, and
participation assured in the relevant decisions. This is only possible if
the group is small and people practically live together for the most
crucial phases of the task. Needless to say, the number of interactions
necessary to involve everybody increases geometrically with the
number of participants. This inevitably limits group participants to
about five, or excludes some from some of the decisions. Successful
groups can be as large as 10 or 15, but only when they are in fact
composed of several smaller subgroups which perform specific parts of
the task, and whose members overlap with each other so that
knowledge of what the different subgroups are doing can be passed
around easily.
4) There is a low degree of skill specialization. Not everyone has to be
able to do everything, but everything must be able to be done by more
than one person. Thus no one is indispensable. To a certain extent,
people become interchangeable parts.

While these conditions can occur serendipitously in small groups, this

is not possible in large ones. Consequently, because the larger
movement in most cities is as unstructured as individual rap groups, it
is not too much more effective than the separate groups at specific
tasks. The informal structure is rarely together enough or in touch
enough with the people to be able to operate effectively. So the
movement generates much motion and few results. Unfortunately, the
consequences of all this motion are not as innocuous as the
results, and their victim is the movement itself.

Some groups have formed themselves into local action projects if they
do not involve many people and work on a small scale. But this form
restricts movement activity to the local level; it cannot be done on the
regional or national. Also, to function well the groups must usually pare
themselves down to that informal group of friends who were running
things in the first place. This excludes many women from participating.
As long as the only way women can participate in the movement is
through membership in a small group, the nongregarious are at a
distinct disadvantage. As long as friendship groups are the main
means of organizational activity, elitism becomes institutionalized.

For those groups which cannot find a local project to which to devote
themselves, the mere act of staying together becomes the reason for
their staying together. When a group has no specific task (and
consciousness-raising is a task), the people in it turn their energies to
controlling others in the group. This is not done so much out of a
malicious desire to manipulate others (though sometimes it is) as out
of a lack of anything better to do with their talents. Able people with
time on their hands and a need to justify their coming together put
their efforts into personal control, and spend their time criticizing the
personalities of the other members in the group. Infighting and
personal power games rule the day. When a group is involved in a
task, people learn to get along with others as they are and to subsume
personal dislikes for the sake of the larger goal. There are limits placed
on the compulsion to remold every person in our image of what they
should be.

The end of consciousness-raising leaves people with no place to go,

and the lack of structure leaves them with no way of getting there. The
women the movement either turn in on themselves and their sisters or
seek other alternatives of action. There are few that are available.
Some women just “do their own thing.” This can lead to a great deal of
individual creativity, much of which is useful for the movement, but it
is not a viable alternative for most women and certainly does not
foster a spirit of cooperative group effort. Other women drift out of the
movement entirely because they don’t want to develop an individual
project and they have found no way of discovering, joining, or starting
group projects that interest them.

Many turn to other political organizations to give them the kind of

structured, effective activity that they have not been able to find in the
women’s movement. Those political organizations which see women’s
liberation as only one of many issues to which women should devote
their time thus find the movement a vast recruiting ground for new
members. There is no need for such organizations
to “infiltrate” (though this is not precluded). The desire for meaningful
political activity generated in women by their becoming part of the
women’s liberation movement is sufficient to make them eager to join
other organizations when the movement itself provides no outlets for
their new ideas and energies.

Those women who join other political organizations while remaining

within the women’s liberation movement, or who join women’s
liberation while remaining in other political organizations, in turn
become the framework for new informal structures. These friendship
networks are based upon their common nonfeminist politics rather
than the characteristics discussed earlier, but operate in much the
same way. Because these women share common values, ideas, and
political orientations, they too become informal, unplanned,
unselected, unresponsible elites — whether they intend to be so or not.

These new informal elites are often perceived as threats by the old
informal elites previously developed within different movement groups.
This is a correct perception. Such politically oriented networks are
rarely willing to be merely “sororities” as many of the old ones were,
and want to proselytize their political as well as their feminist ideas.
This is only natural, but its implications for women’s liberation have
never been adequately discussed. The old elites are rarely willing to
bring such differences of opinion out into the open because it would
involve exposing the nature of the informal structure of the group.
Many of these informal elites have been hiding under the banner
of “anti-elitism” and “structurelessness.” To effectively counter the
competition from another informal structure, they would have to
become “public,” and this possibility is fraught with many dangerous
implications. Thus, to maintain its own power, it is easier to rationalize
the exclusion of the members of the other informal structure by such
means as “red-baiting,” “reformist-baiting,” “lesbian-baiting,” or
“straight-baiting.” The only other alternative is to formally structure
the group in such a way that the original power structure is
institutionalized. This is not always possible. If the informal elites have
been well structured and have exercised a fair amount of power in the
past, such a task is feasible. These groups have a history of being
somewhat politically effective in the past, as the tightness of the
informal structure has proven an adequate substitute for a formal
structure. Becoming structured does not alter their operation much,
though the institutionalization of the power structure does open it to
formal challenge. It is those groups which are in greatest need of
structure that are often least capable of creating it. Their informal
structures have not been too well formed and adherence to the
ideology of “structurelessness” makes them reluctant to change
tactics. The more unstructured a group is, the more lacking it is in
informal structures, and the more it adheres to an ideology
of “structurelessness,” the more vulnerable it is to being taken over by
a group of political comrades.

Since the movement at large is just as unstructured as most of its

constituent groups, it is similarly susceptible to indirect influence. But
the phenomenon manifests itself differently. On a local level most
groups can operate autonomously; but the only groups that can
organize a national activity are nationally organized groups. Thus, it is
often the structured feminist organizations that provide national
direction for feminist activities, and this direction is determined by the
priorities of those organizations. Such groups as NOW, WEAL, and
some leftist women’s caucuses are simply the only organizations
capable of mounting a national campaign. The multitude
of unstructured women’s liberation groups can choose to support or
not support the national campaigns, but are incapable of mounting
their own. Thus their members become the troops under the
leadership of the structured organizations. The avowedlyunstructured
group has no way of drawing upon the movement’s vast resources to
support its priorities. It doesn’t even have a way of deciding what
those priorities are.

The more unstructured a movement is, the less control it has over the
directions in which it develops and the political actions in which it
engages. This does not mean that its ideas do not spread. Given a
certain amount of interest by the media and the appropriateness of
social conditions, the ideas will still be diffused widely. But diffusion of
ideas does not mean they are implemented; it only means they are
talked about. Insofar as they can be applied individually they may be
acted on; insofar as they require coordinated political power to be
implemented, they will not be.

As long as the women’s liberation movement stays dedicated to a form

of organization which stresses small, inactive discussion groups among
friends, the worst problems ofunstructuredness will not be felt. But this
style of organization has its limits; it is politically inefficacious,
exclusive, and discriminatory against those women who are not or
cannot be tied into the friendship networks. Those who do not fit into
what already exists because of class, race, occupation, education,
parental or marital status, personality, etc., will inevitably be
discouraged from trying to participate. Those who do fit in will develop
vested interests in maintaining things as they are.

The informal groups’ vested interests will be sustained by the informal

structures which exist, and the movement will have no way of
determining who shall exercise power within it. If the movement
continues deliberately to not select who shall exercise power, it does
not thereby abolish power. All it does is abdicate the right to demand
that those who do exercise power and influence be responsible for it. If
the movement continues to keep power as diffuse as possible because
it knows it cannot demand responsibility from those who have it, it
does prevent any group or person from totally dominating. But it
simultaneously ensures that the movement is as ineffective as
possible. Some middle ground between domination and ineffectiveness
can and must be found.

These problems are coming to a head at this time because the nature
of the movement is necessarily changing. Consciousness-raising as the
main function of the women’s liberation movement is becoming
obsolete. Due to the intense press publicity of the last two years and
the numerous overground books and articles now being circulated,
women’s liberation has become a household word. Its issues are
discussed and informal rap groups are formed by people who have no
explicit connection with any movement group. The movement must go
on to other tasks. It now needs to establish its priorities, articulate its
goals, and pursue its objectives in a coordinated fashion. To do this it
must get organized — locally, regionally, and nationally.

Principles of Democratic Structuring

Once the movement no longer clings tenaciously to the ideology
of “structurelessness,” it is free to develop those forms of organization
best suited to its healthy functioning. This does not mean that we
should go to the other extreme and blindly imitate the traditional forms
of organization. But neither should we blindly reject them all. Some of
the traditional techniques will prove useful, albeit not perfect; some
will give us insights into what we should and should not do to obtain
certain ends with minimal costs to the individuals in the movement.
Mostly, we will have to experiment with different kinds of structuring
and develop a variety of techniques to use for different situations. The
Lot System is one such idea which has emerged from the movement. It
is not applicable to all situations, but is useful in some. Other ideas for
structuring are needed. But before we can proceed to experiment
intelligently, we must accept the idea that there is nothing inherently
bad about structure itself — only its excess use.

While engaging in this trial-and-error process, there are some

principles we can keep in mind that are essential to democratic
structuring and are also politically effective:

1) Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific

tasks by democratic procedures. Letting people assume jobs or tasks
only by default means they are not dependably done. If people are
selected to do a task, preferably after expressing an interest or
willingness to do it, they have made a commitment which cannot so
easily be ignored.

2) Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to

be responsible to those who selected them. This is how the group has
control over people in positions of authority. Individuals may exercise
power, but it is the group that has ultimate say over how the power is
exercised.

3) Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably

possible. This prevents monopoly of power and requires those in
positions of authority to consult with many others in the process of
exercising it. It also gives many people the opportunity to have
responsibility for specific tasks and thereby to learn different skills.

4) Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held

too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that
person’s “property” and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the
group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual
does not have time to learn her job well and acquire the sense of
satisfaction of doing a good job.

5) Allocation of tasks along rational criteria. Selecting someone for a

position because they are liked by the group or giving them hard work
because they are disliked serves neither the group nor the person in
the long run. Ability, interest, and responsibility have got to be the
major concerns in such selection. People should be given an
opportunity to learn skills they do not have, but this is best done
through some sort of “apprenticeship” program rather than the “sink
or swim” method. Having a responsibility one can’t handle well is
demoralizing. Conversely, being blacklisted from doing what one can
do well does not encourage one to develop one’s skills. Women have
been punished for being competent throughout most of human history;
the movement does not need to repeat this process.
6) Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible.
Information is power. Access to information enhances one’s power.
When an informal network spreads new ideas and information among
themselves outside the group, they are already engaged in the process
of forming an opinion — without the group participating. The more one
knows about how things work and what is happening, the more
politically effective one can be.

7) Equal access to resources needed by the group. This is not always

perfectly possible, but should be striven for. A member who maintains
a monopoly over a needed resource (like a printing press owned by a
husband, or a darkroom) can unduly influence the use of that resource.
Skills and information are also resources. Members’ skills can be
equitably available only when members are willing to teach what they
know to others.

When these principles are applied, they ensure that whatever

structures are developed by different movement groups will be
controlled by and responsible to the group. The group of people in
positions of authority will be diffuse, flexible, open, and temporary.
They will not be in such an easy position to institutionalize their power
because ultimate decisions will be made by the group at large, The
group will have the power to determine who shall exercise authority
within it.