On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 12:00 PM Richard Modiano <[email protected]> wrote: > > "If the Left is to succeed where past generations have failed, it can’t allow sectarian organizations to operate as parties within a party.” > > "The recent announcement of the Trotskyist organization Socialist Alternative (SAlt) that its members were coming aboard, followed by a similar declaration from its leading member, Kshama Sawant, has simply made public a process that has been underway for some time — that various marginal Trotskyist organizations have infiltrated the DSA in a practice known as entryism.” > > https://inthesetimes.com/article/dsa-socialist-alternative-entryism-socialism-marxism
On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 12:04 PM Steven L. Robinson <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hardly surprising this came out, although I was expecting something to this effect much earlier. What role or influence, if any, do the signers still have within DSA anyway? On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 1:49 PM Michael Yates <[email protected]> wrote: > > This article in In These Times is just dreadful. Red-baiting for certain. One of the authors is an old Cold Warrior, Leo Casey. Now who would you rather have in your organization, Leo Casey or Kshama Sawant? Who is the sectarian here? Has anyone noticed when certain DSA and Jacobin magazine types talk about cooperation with those to their left, they just assume that we will move toward their position. Never the opposite. Never. On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 2:38 PM Andrew Pollack <[email protected]> wrote: > > For the history and politics of the 1930s fight, see > https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol04/no01/editors4.htm > See also Cannon in his History of American Trotskyism Michael Yates 'hits the nail on the head' describing this *In These Times* article as classic red-baiting. IMO it is a case of 'Old Guard' DSA leaders (including some whose histories go back to the pre-DSA, DSOC and NAM organizations) taking the initiative to form a right-wing faction to fight against revolutionary socialist developments within DSA. The growing post-2016 multi-tendency DSA has been open to a variety of *caucuses* of different political tendencies across a broad spectrum of socialist views. I think this article on 'the dangers of factionalism' marks the initial development of an actual *faction* which wants to exclude left-wing revolutionary socialists from DSA membership. We revolutionary socialists might look at this development as an encouraging sign that revolutionary socialist numbers are growing within DSA. These Old Guard DSA leaders have been extremely influential in DSA over past decades but it remains to be seen what their influence is today. Joseph Schwartz who is apparently the actual author of this article signed by the others was elected to the National Political Committee leadership of the DSA at DSA's first national convention in 1983 and was still being elected to the NPC at the DSA's 2017 national convention in Chicago (another signer and old guard DSAer, Christine Riddiough, was also elected to the DSA NPC at the 2017 convention; but neither Riddiough nor Schwartz was elected to the NPC at the last, 2019 DSA national convention in Atlanta). Another signer of this *In These Times* factional article against factionalism is Maxine Phillips who at least up until recently has been a central leader of the DSA national organization. These Old Guard DSA authors present a false and tendentious version of the history of entryism in the Socialist Party of the 1930s, as is exposed in the reference Andrew Pollack has provided. In the history of the Socialist Party in the U.S. it is typical to see reformist leaders splitting the party to preserve their undemocratic organizational control in the face of the growing revolutionary socialist majority membership. This was the case in the World War I era as described by then-contemporary influential Socialist Party activist Arne Swabeck: "Why Did the Socialist Party Decline?" *Against the Current*, Jan/Feb 2002 https://againstthecurrent.org/atc096/p1308/ [this is a section of Swabeck's never-yet published afaik autobiography "From Debs to Mao" written over several years starting in 1968]. Swabeck's comments are also criticism of James Weinstein's 1967 book "The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912 - 1925" where Weinstein argued that the Socialist Party was doing great until growing revolutionary socialist membership (inspired by the Bolshevik revolution) became a threat to continued Old Guard reformist leadership (the 1981 Hollywood film "Reds" also tells this story). Weinstein was the 1976 founding editor of *In These Times* which has long been a *de facto* organ of the reformist Democrat Party oriented DSA leadership. Lately i thought i had seen seen encouraging signs that *In These Times* may be editorially moving to the left but apparently it is at least still available for use by the Old Guard DSA reformists. On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 1:49 PM Michael Yates <[email protected]> wrote: > This article in In These Times is just dreadful. Red-baiting for certain. > One of the authors is an old Cold Warrior, Leo Casey. Now who would you > rather have in your organization, Leo Casey or Kshama Sawant? Who is the > sectarian here? Has anyone noticed when certain DSA and Jacobin magazine > types talk about cooperation with those to their left, they just assume > that we will move toward their position. Never the opposite. Never. > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#7696): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7696 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/81756580/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
