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For the Love of the Movement?
Three weeks into my freshman year at Columbia, I ran into a couple of
twentysomethings representing a campus group called the International Socialist
Organization. A week later, I sat down with them in the student union café to
trade opinions on the state of affairs—Katrina, Iraq, Palestine,
the Democrats, and so forth. By the end of the meeting, I was a member.
Literally a card-carrying communist, to live a cliché.
Aside from some chunks of the Manifesto and a half-assed yet
interest-piquing overview of socialism in my 10th-grade history
class, I hadn’t really considered myself a follower of principled radical
politics to that point. I admired Malcolm X, grew up nearby the former stomping
grounds of the Black Panthers, and found inspiration in the Third World
Liberation Front, but back then terms like dialectical
materialism and petit-bourgeoisie were far beyond my grasp. Yet I nevertheless jumped in headfirst, because for
the first time in my life I had found peers not awash in the sterile,
countercultural liberalism of Berkeley.
I saw in them staunch devotees to a cause with the aroma of romanticism but the
tenets of thought-out social critique. They advocated for a new, possible
world, sought to rebuild a Left nearly dead in the era of Reagans and Bushes. And so I
followed. Not just a member—a comrade. Cadre-to-be.
Eighteen months in the ISO seemed like a lifetime unto
itself. I organized contingents to antiwar marches in D.C., grassroots student
immigrants rights coalitions, and anti-police brutality speaker panels. I sold
the organization’s weekly periodical in 40-degree weather on Saturday mornings
in Harlem. Within four months I sat on the
steering committee for our branch of the organization. I put my academic career
at Columbia on
thin ice when I occupied the stage during a speech by Jim Gilchrist, co-founder
of the Minutemen. I became an able speaker on the Russian Revolution, Lenin’s Imperialism, the labor theory of value,
the plight of the Gaza
strip, and why NAFTA sucks.
And, after a year and a half, I was never happier than when
I left.
Why? Beneath the powerful rhetoric and dedication of the
ISO’s cadre lay an organization beset by a bevy of contradictions that I
couldn’t take any longer. Comrades would consistently fail to do their assigned
tasks, show up to paper sales and meetings, and thus the burden of labor would
fall on the shoulders of a few. People who did not speak up in meetings were
singled out behind closed doors, as if rattling off chance words had more merit
than carefully weighed and well-thought out talking points. Senior cadre would
take detailed and often intrusive notes on newer members, and leadership
meetings often turned into inquisitions on why select people didn’t agree on
certain points. Members from more affluent backgrounds would speak as members
of the proletariat in public, and go home to snort cocaine.
Most heinously, an organization that touted itself on
eradicating sexism and transforming the structures of human relations had its
healthy share of chauvinists. Members would cheat on their partners, and a
fairly prominent senior member used one of my friends as a sexual object—and I
saw a few complaints about these practices go unheeded. My participation in Asian
American organizations and volunteer groups on campus was questioned as playing
into identity politics and reformism, or, at other times, a way to scope out
other recruits of color. The attention paid towards bringing in black, Latino,
Middle Eastern, and Asian radicals into a mostly white organization was
remarkable in one vein, but also carried with it the uncertain taste that
people of color were overly seen as “bonus points.” For an organization that
called for the overthrow of capitalism and the fundamental upheaval of society,
the ISO felt oddly confining, detached, other-worldly. I sat through four-hour
meetings and lost touch with friends. So I bounced.
I’m still highly sympathetic towards radical theory and
follow (points of) Marxism, I think theory and practice are inseparable, and
yeah, I will always contend that the Democrats are kinda wack. I admire members
of the ISO for their tireless efforts to legitimize socialist politics amidst
significant disapproval, and their contributions to the antiwar, immigrants
rights, anti-death penalty, and labor rights movements are commendable. But for
me, a cabal of white Marxists sitting in stuffy reading circles held less
weight than circles of progressive—not necessarily radical, but many were and
are—fellow students of color and allies, where different ideas are given their proper
credence and form a more organic, multifaceted whole. Fellow organizers should
be genuine friends, brothers and
sisters and those who identify otherwise, not just cadre and newbies. If that
makes me an identity politico, a reformist, a right-opportunist... well, I’ll take that with a grain of salt and
keep on doing what I do.
Yeah, this world needs to be wrenched from the hands of the
profiteers and the corporate giants, no doubt. And certainly, it’s going to
take some serious militancy on multiple fronts to get to that point. But I
doubt we’ll get there if folks feel trapped by the forces that are there to
purportedly liberate them. And progressive endeavors come in many forms, under
myriad opinions and theories of what works. I’d be lying if I had a real sense
of the steps it’ll take to bring the Powers That Be to their knees. Until we
get there, though, I’ll be in it however I can, Shachtmanite-Trotskyist or not.
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