And while the Trotskyite movement has always claimed to be a more democratic alternative to Stalinism, Trotskyite organizations have historically been plagued by factionalism to a greater degree than any other "democratic-centralist" movement of similar pretentions. Historically, those who have disagreed with a party line in some way have been expelled or forced to quit (usually with mutual accusations of counter-revolution) and subsequently formed their own organizations, which subsequently split as well, and so on. While I know of no organized Trotskyite groups which began as spinoffs formed by expelled ISO members, I do know of at least one spinoff of the British SWP, and the pressure to conform within American ISO circles is undeniable.
I know for a fact that there was at least one purge within the Pittsburgh branch some two or three years before I arrived on campus. The local commissar who was directly responsible for it told me her version of the story, beaming with pride at how she had engineered a virtual coup to clear out the "petty-bourgeois intellectuals" from the branch. I have spoken to several of those who were purged as well, and their story jives with that of the apparatchik- excepting, of course, that it is told from the other side. Apparently, the Pittsburgh ISO had around a dozen members at the time the above-mentioned member arrived from the branch in Providence, Rhode Island. This member got in contact with "the Center" (the ISO's name for its Politburo in Chicago), which in turn sent an agent to Pittsburgh to set the branch on the approved course. He held a meeting in which he denounced the members for allegedly running a mere "intellectual" talk shop, for insufficient aplomb in selling *Socialist Worker*, for not recruiting enough members, and for being "petty-bourgeois." All of the branch quit, with the exception of the local enforcer of the Party Line. This particular action was part of a wave of crackdowns by the Center on branch autonomy throughout the country. And while I cannot substantiate the hunch, there are indications that there may be another purge occurring within the ISO right now. This is a ripe time for such an event, because the ISO has undeniably seen some growth in its membership since the victory of the Teamsters' strike at UPS, which raised the profile of the labor movement in general. Having temporarily switched to a more liberal membership policy, the Center may now be trying to fully impose organizational discipline on newer members. The branch in Pittsburgh was far too small to exhibit any of the telltale signs of this, but I have heard stories of members in other cities being insulted for being "class traitors" and for "opting out of the class struggle," with some leaving the group in tears. And even in Pittsburgh, I recently talked to another member with years of experience who left after a barrage of insults (a matter to which I will return), thus reducing the membership of the Pittsburgh branch to five. A fine achievement, indeed, for a group that expelled ten or twelve "petty-bourgeois intellectuals" several years ago for their ostensible failure to recruit enough members.
"Cadre meetings" are festivals of both Maoist-style "self-criticism" and backstabbing of other left activists, as well as speculation on the loyalties of those members who do not attend them. In the case of suspect activists, without and sometimes withi n the organization, the term "petty-bourgeois" gets thrown around a lot. It would be too simple of me to point out the fact- and it is a fact- that those members who come from the most privileged backgrounds are the most likely to use this term as a pejorative. The issue is not whether the ISO is itself petty-bourgeois; rather, the ISO is merely *petty*. That is why one shouldn't feel the slightest bit guilty about criticizing them. Granted, left unity is important, and we should never offer encouragement to the red-baiters and witch-hunters of the right. But the ISO has no problem with castigating other progressive groups for alleged inaction, nor does it hesitate to take a piss on any and all democratically-elected union leaders who do not meet the standards of this self-appointed Vanguard of the Working Class. Red-baiting is a serious problem which has had disastrous consequences in the United States, but the ISO belittles this terrible history by dismissing any and all criticism as "red-baiting ." Its members are literally unable to tell the difference between a statement such as "Go back to Russia, you commies" and a statement more along the lines of "Look, I don't wanna buy your goddamn newspaper, I'm just here to support issue x." Similarly, even though the last thing the Movement needs these days is a lot of senseless infighting over who is or is not a Genuine Prole, the ISO uses the term "petty-bourgeois" to refer not to a person's class, but to anyone who disagrees with the ISO, which through a dialectical process holds the *real* "working-class" position.
A counterpart to the group's smug class-baiting is its paranoid anti-intellectualism. This latter tendency is not to be confused with legitimate criticism of intellectuals. Noam Chomsky, for example, has severely criticized those intellectuals who make apologies for the Establishment and its atrocities, but Chomsky has done so *as an intellectual* and with respect for the intellectual tradition. The ISO is suspicious of intellectuals in general for the simple reason that it is suspicious of any kind o f independent thinking. Anti-intellectualism is the first sign that a given group is about to make you toe the Party Line, and the ISO has plenty of it. Furthermore, for the ISO, anti-intellectualism serves much the same function that August Bebel once attributed to anti-Semitism: it is "the socialism of fools." While no ISO member is going to admit it to you, the sect's contempt for intellectuals has a corollary, and that is its contempt for the intelligence of the average person. They seem to believe that real working people don't do a lot of thinking, so "intellectuals" are potential "class-traitors" and perhaps even outright "petty-bourgeois." How else to explain the style of *Socialist Worker*? The paper openly apes the style of supermarket tabloids, complete with large-type front-page headlines phrased in the most maudlin manner, and heavily-simplified articles with scores of adjectives and exclamation points.
As with all Leninist sects, supreme emphasis is placed on the sale of the organization's newspaper. There is little I can say about this newspaper other than what I've already said. The two-page feature "On the Picketline" is half-decent, although it is nowhere near what I heard one member call it: "the best labor reporting in the country." (That distinction goes to the Communist Party's *People's Weekly World*.) For the most part, *Socialist Worker* fits precisely the description that *Nation* columnist Christopher Hitchens has bestowed on its British counterpart: "principally made up of exhortation and, of that exhortation, principally composed of crude syndicalist diatribe .... [A] record of strikes that didn't come off, and of strikes that did while failing to make any difference." (Hitchens, incidentally, was a member of the original International Socialists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it was apparently a more creative and intellectually vibrant organization. Those with access to a library with a good periodicals section may want to check out Hitchens's ruminations on this topic in the *London Review of Books*, 6 January 1994.)
One of the more surreal moments of my ISO experience surrounded the sale of *Socialist Worker*. At one cadre meeting, we were discussing the reluctance of branch members to sell it. As you can imagine, I was one of the worst offenders: I would carefully hide my copies of the paper under my petition in favor of the maintenance workers. After asking people to sign the petition, I would merely thank them, and they would generally be on their way. Rarely did I ever bother to make the pitch for the paper, and then only to placate a nearby ISO comrade. In any event, other members were somewhat reluctant as well. Speaking to this problem, one member had a bizarre piece of advice on how to overcome shyness: "I have been reluctant to approach people, too, but when I stop to think about the fact that I'm willing to *die* for this ..." etc.
Such ruminations are not at all out of character for the ISO. They forget that they are merely half-a-dozen people peddling papers on the street, not seasoned insurrectionary leaders who are in imminent danger of being forced to make the ultimate sacrifice for the Revolution. The most severe example of this tendency in Pittsburgh is the purge-initiating commissar I described above. At one public meeting during my membership in the organization, we were discussing (what else?) the Russian Revolution and the reasons for its failure. The principle problems, the ISO contended, were isolation, foreign invasion, and counter-revolutionary violence. At this point, though, the commissar stood up to assuage the fears of the wary: have no fear, she pointed out , when we have a revolution in this country, we will have no trouble defending it, because as in all revolutions the army will come to our side. She specifically mentioned that the Revolution would have access to tanks and F-14s. Tanks and F-14s in the service of humanity: what an image, huh?
The worst example I know of, though, occurred after my departure from the organization, so I did not hear the statement directly, but I heard it from the veteran ISO member mentioned above who was recently forced to leave. I had remembered the commissar and the rest of the branch backstabbing this particular individual even while I had been a member. She had a class scheduled the same night as branch meetings, which annoyed the more orthodox to no end. All of their displeasure with her boiled over in a cadre meeting. The commissar and her closest associate (the vice-commissar who had made the statement about being willing to die) had just come back from a meeting of the ISO's National Convention. The commissar brought the news that the Midwest ISO organizer had called the Pittsburgh branch "uncreative and inward-looking," and then asked the branch for its opinions. When the soon-to-be-ex-member stated that this description of the branch was more or less correct, the commissar proceeded to blame the branch's entire debacle on this member, calling her a "petty-bourgeois dilettante." When the "dilettante" (whose father, incidentally, is a Teamster) replied that she "really didn't give a shit" what the commissar thought, the commissar answered: "I'm not the only one who thinks this," and then proceeded to have the other members denounce the "dilettante" for "putting limits on her time" and "only doing things half-way." After this miniature *Darkness At Noon* scenario had been carried out, the commissar then proceeded to state emphatically: "You know, I don't even care that much that we're only five members, because that way we'll be tight, we'll know what we're about, and we'll have our perspective right, because when the Revolution comes, we're going to have to kill people."
The stories of ISO fanaticism and incompetence could go on, but by now the reader should have a sufficient understanding of the nuttiness of the sect. That does not necessarily solve the problem of how to deal with them, however.
In my personal case, I was the first to jump on a proposal by the ISO leadership that we initiate a broader coalition to incorporate all who were interested in acting in solidarity with the maintenance workers. The ISO intended the group to be a front. The commissar told me flatly: "No, we don't do that," but of course I knew otherwise. I had other intentions: the ISO veterans were principally graduate students, but I was closer to three other newer members who were undergraduates. I collaborated with these members- who had quickly realized the extent of the ISO's disengagement from reality- and together with some people who were not members of the ISO we planned to make the new group - Students in Solidarity with Local 29- a truly independent organization, and I planned to quit the ISO at an opportune time. The ISO veterans eventually caught on that something was up, and they clearly didn't like it. At one meeting, the vice-commissar stood up and denounced what she saw as a tendency of "some members " to see work on Local 29 solidarity as a substitution for work in the ISO. By that time, though, two other members and I had already made plans to get out, and we decided to do so before Christmas break, because we didn't want the issue to be hanging over our heads, nor did we want ISO members hassling us over the break (which we judged them completely capable of doing). We quit in early December; my own membership in the ISO had lasted less than three months.
We had at best mixed success in our struggle for a better movement, though. The workers themselves were largely unwilling to take part in pressuring the University, a fact which the ISO blamed on the elected union leadership. The ISO repeatedly suggested that "we" had to "give the lead," per their usual habit of thinking themselves the true leaders of the working class. We had held a somewhat successful rally in October, drawing several dozen workers and upwards of one hundred students, in the days when contract negotiations had just been heating up. Now it was the spring semester, contract negotiations were in a quagmire, and the ISO called for another rally. The rest of Students in Solidarity agreed, but the rally was a failure, drawing no workers and almost no students other than members of the group. Almost immediately, though, the ISO wanted another rally, and this time we shot it down. The ISO clearly had no creative tactics, much less a coherent strategy aside from a passionate desire to "take it to the streets." We had no creative tactics, either, but we at least admitted as much. We were willing to take action, but only to a certain point beyond what the union itself was willing to do, and we were not about to turn the student labor solidarity movement into a ridiculous band of street noisemakers who protested in futility every week without the presence of the very workers we claimed to support.
Some time late in the spring semester, though, the union itself called another rally, once again sparsely attended by workers. The difference this time, though, was that quite a few students showed up, and I am proud to say that almost all of them were organized as a result of the activity of the non-ISO members of Students in Solidarity. The problem was that we were a workers-solidarity movement without the workers. But we could at last say that we had done our job.
The ISO deserved credit, of course, for being on top of the issue when no one else was. But their sectarian behavior scared people away. By the spring semester, there were more students in the larger Students in Solidarity with Local 29 group than there were in the ISO, even if the group itself was still small. Yet even after the last rally, I have no doubt that the vast majority of the student body still associated the Local 29 solidarity movement with the ISO. This more than anything made me upset with the ISO: they were unwilling to drop the egotistical advancement of their sectarian interests even when these were hurting the movement as a whole.
Nevertheless, I can't help but mention that I was much more annoyed at those who sympathized with the workers yet would not help due to personal distaste for the ISO. And I know that there were at least ten of these for every one of us that stuck with it. At colleges across the country, it is people like this who allow the ISO to pass itself off as the exclusive voice of the left, and thereby to stunt the growth of the campus left in general. So long as these individuals stay silent, the ISO will always have recourse to its most powerful weapon: the question, "What are *you* doing?" What the ISO is doing is not constructive, for all their pretentions about "building a movement." But they are doing *something*, and until the rest of the left gets off of its collective ass and does something real, it will have no right to scorn groups like the ISO.