A wit once remarked that of all the Jesuits, the worst are the Protestant ones. I have come to the conclusion that this cogent observation has a counterpart when it comes to the world of the sectarian left: of all the Stalinists, the worst are the Trotskyites.
And among these, there is the group that a member of which once proudly described to me as "the fastest-growing organization on the Trotskyist left": the International Socialist Organization (ISO). Properly speaking, the ISO is not Trotskyist, since most such organizations saw progressive features in the USSR even during the Stalin era, while the ISO dismisses the entire post-Trotsky Soviet venture as "state capitalism." But since the group vociferously claims the mantle of the exiled founder of the Red Army, it seems a little perverse to deny them the label they seek for themselves. On the surface, though, the ISO is not as objectionable as the three other main Trotskyite groupings in the United States: the Castro-worshipers of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, publishers of *The Militant*), not to be confused with the ISO's British "sister organization" of the same name; the Socialist Equality Party (SEP, publishers of the Internet-only *International Workers Bulletin*), which dismisses all trade un ions as "reactionary"; and the certifiably lunatic Spartacist League (SL, publishers of *Workers Vanguard*), which still boasts of its support for Soviet military operations in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s. But anyone who has ever worked with the ISO - and, as a consequence, has been incessantly solicited to purchase a copy of its biweekly tabloid, *Socialist Worker*- knows that the ISO can hold its own with its factional rivals in terms of fanatical persistence.
Before this author relates the story of his own involvement with the Trots-of-choice for more college students than all the other leading brands combined, let him give you one piece of advice: Kids, don't try this at home. As a small-town high-school student, yours truly was a diligent reader of the left-wing press, both big and small, reliable and zany, thoughtful and dogmatic. As a result, he had honed his skills at being able to tell the real deal from the charlatans, and the committed from the merely cultish. Therefore, he knew what to expect from the Jehovah's Leninists, and joined them only for the sake of expediency, with plans to get out as soon as possible. The inexperienced and the less wary may be in for an unpleasant surprise, so be forewarned.
So why did I join an insular clique whose methods I found ineffective and often juvenile, and which I knew I would leave at the first opportunity? Even now, writing this little polemic, I feel nothing like the defectors who left the Communist Party or radicalism in general to write numerous self-serving mea culpas over the years. All of these- from the annoying Arthur Koestler of *The God That Failed* in the early Cold War days to the nauseating David Horowitz today - have whined and complained of being duped and misled. I, however, knew exactly what I was getting into, and had no illusions about joining a movement which would one day bring in the Workers' Paradise. One cannot seriously be a defector from an organization in whose methods one never believed in the first place.
So, once again, why? To be crudely frank, I had no other choice. The sad fact is that the ISO is the only game in town when it comes to many college campuses nowadays. Part of this phenomenon is a result of the group's own strategy. At some point most college-based Trots, Maoists, and other left-wing nut-cults- especially after the disintegration of the once-vibrant Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969- made the decision to "industrialize," i.e., have their members get jobs in factories in order to bring the Holy Word to the unwashed masses of the American working class. All of these attempts failed, and some of these groups (most notably the SWP of the USA) are still mired in this strategic dead-end. The ISO, however, never fell for this trap. Shortly after its founding in 1977 as the American branch of the "International Socialist Tendency" (the largest branch of which was and is the Socialist Workers Party of Britain), the ISO made the conscious decision to base itself on college campuses. Their thinking was that- especially during the conservative Reagan years - the working class was demoralized and not ripe for revolutionary agitation. Therefore, they would concentrate on "building" a committed corps of activists from college campuses, who would be in it for the long haul and ready to recruit workers when the next "upturn in struggle" occurred.
As far as it went, the strategy worked. While other sects stagnated, the ISO grew, if only by ones and twos. Throughout the 1980s they picked up a welfare-rights or environmental activist here, a Central American solidarity or anti-apartheid protester there. They claimed to advocate that synthesis of all militant movements for social change that socialists at their best have always promoted- a prospect that was, is, and ought to be appealing to many activists. One should never doubt, though, that the majority of recruits drifted away from the group in those days for the same reason they drift away from it now: the discovery that the ISO's priority is not the support of all militant movements for social change, but rather the use of progressive movements as recruiting grounds for the ISO (a process which the organization's commissars see as ipso facto synonymous with "building the socialist alternative"). Then as now, the few who stayed in the group saw the high attrition rate not as a sign that the ISO itself might be doing something wrong, but as proof positive that not everybody was cut out to be part of the would-be Vanguard of the Revolution. The result was the creation of the hardened cadres the group was designed to create, and they were hardened still further by a siege mentality which was far from unjustified in those years of the Grenada invasion, *Rambo*, Ollie North, Bitburg, and Ketchup-as-Vegetable.
But, as I have mentioned, the ISO's own actions are only part of the explanation for its disproportionate visibility on campuses. The other part of the explanation is the sluggishness of most of the rest of the left. Too often, the majority of would-be activists are outmaneuvered by a tiny but persistent sect which is ready to latch on to any hint of a movement and make it into its own, and whose members are kept energized by an unceasing schedule of routinized- almost rhythmic-activity. This is the situation I encountered when I entered the University of Pittsburgh as a freshman in the fall of 1997.
The maintenance workers at the University, represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 29, were engaged in a prolonged dispute with the administration. As of this writing, in fact, they are still without a contract, and have been so since December of 1995. It was obvious to me that this issue should have priority for the campus left, given its proximity. This went doubly so for me, as I was (and am) attending school on a scholarship from the University, and so had an obligation a s a beneficiary of the system not to ignore the plight of those who were (and are) marginalized by that system.
The local branch of the ISO, comprising some half-dozen members, was (rightly) pouring all of its energy into the issue. Among both students and faculty, no one else- literally no one- was doing anything. As a result, a situation quickly arose in which anyone who wanted to act in solidarity with the union had to work side-by-side with the ISO. The group made contacts with the union leadership, which was more than willing to accept help from *anybody*. I made the decision to join very early on. It seemed the rational thing to do at the time for several interrelated reasons: most importantly, the minute I showed interest, I was besieged with demands to join. These were fast acquiring the irritating quality of a broken record, and as long as the expedient would do no harm, the simple desire to do what was necessary to shut them up was good enough for me. Second, I had a hunch that being on "the inside" would put me in a better position to do what I could to reign in the damaging tendencies I was sure the Trots possessed. In hindsight, I can't help but conclude that I was more or less correct in making the decision I did. Being a member, and an active one at that, allows you to see the logic behind the ISO's sometimes bizarre behavior. Most have contact with the ISO only because of one of their vaunted weekly "public meetings"- you know, when they practically bathe their habitat in posters inviting the public to come hear the ISO's take on a particular topic of social, political, or historic interest, and end up invariably offering the same solution: Join The ISO. But beyond these, there are the "cadre meetings," which are members-only events where the apparatchiks see to it that the foot-soldiers are behaving in a manner conducive to "building" the organization. (Incidentally, while use of the verb "to build" is fairly common- especially on the left- in reference to parties and coalitions, the ISO has an inordinate fondness for the word. They build the ISO. They build *Socialist Worker* paper sales. They build "fightbacks." They build meetings. They damn well build near everything. Their use of the idiom has reached a point where it is devoid of content and is little more than a rhetorical device; they might as well be building a "bridge to the twenty-first century.") The meetings are also intended to consolidate members' adherence to the theoretical line of the organization, which- despite the leadership's insistence otherwise- is more or less written in stone. Because the ISO is so s mall, those who disagree with one aspect of the line or another are not technically unwelcome in the organization, but when members voice these disagreements, the response of the commissars is to say: "Well, we'll have that argument." And they do not lie ; the argument follows shortly. The understanding, though, is that those disagreements that do exist will eventually be pounded out of the deviationist, and that said member will eventually recognize the error in his/her thinking.
An arcane but illustrative topic is the ISO position on the Soviet Union. Here, as elsewhere, the group has a set dogma: unadulterated glorification of the early years following the Revolution coupled with unadulterated vilification of the years following the death of Lenin and the eventual expulsion of Trotsky. The position is free of nuance; all of the problems that arose during the early years are blamed on circumstance, and while the ISO admits that the Bolsheviks made "mistakes," they can acknowledge no fundamental problems with Bolshevik theory, practice, or organization. Similarly, they acknowledge none of the positive effects of the later USSR on world politics (such as the fact that the Soviet Union defeated Hitler, or that its indispensable aid to the Cuban Revolution and to the African National Congress struggle against apartheid were, on the whole, good things). Personally, I found the ISO position doctrinaire, although somewhat preferable to that of anarchists who dismiss the entire Revolution as a coup by the power-hungry Bolshies. But in any event, one would think that we could all agree to disagree, as the vast distance in time and the incredible difference in circumstances between Russia in 1917 and the United States eighty years later would have rendered the entire subject sufficiently unimportant. Not so; anyone who has spent more than five minutes in conversation with an ISO member knows that they have the capacity to talk endlessly about the Russian Revolution and the necessity of accepting their assessment of its history. Granted, no historical event is entirely devoid of lessons for current practice, but no matter what a person's position on what happened in Petrograd in 1917, it should be obvious that Leninist theory and organization hold very little relevance for practice today. Tactics and strategy originally developed for use by a persecuted band of revolutionaries in early-twentieth-century Tsarist Russia would have to be altered unrecognizably to fit the circumstances of the late-twentieth-century USA. But the ISO does not recognize this fact, and that is the real reason for their obsession with the Defense of October.
While the group has the good sense to call itself the International Socialist *Organization*, rather than ridiculously terming itself a "party," it makes no secret that its activities are intended to be the "beginning stages" of building a party. (No doubt the plan is to follow the example of its parent organization, the International Socialists of Britain, who renamed themselves the Socialist Workers Party in the mid-1970s. The group's own estimates- which are not necessarily to be trusted- put its membership at over 10,000. That's a lot o' Trots, but even still does not qualify as a real political party. The designation is arbitrary, and ultimately rests only with the group itself.) And the kind of party it intends to build is clearly to be modeled on classic Leninist lines, with an emphasis on the principle of "democratic centralism." This principle states that debate within the organization is to be unrestricted, but that once the entire party votes on a particular question, all members are obligated to defend that position in public as the position of the party. To a degree, this position makes sense; it is argued that at some point action needs to be taken without the group being hamstrung by infighting. But in practice, the result is even more infighting, as orthodox members sow suspicion of those who voice dissident opinions or who seem otherwise insufficiently committed.