The Roots of The ISA Crisis

https://iclfi.org/pubs/wv/2024-isa

All is not well in the International Socialist Alternative (ISA). The last few months have seen an accelerating disintegration of what has been one of the largest ostensibly Trotskyist tendencies. Earlier this year, an international faction to “Defend Safeguarding, Socialist Feminism and Internal Democracy” split the tendency down the middle, resulting in at least the Irish section leaving the ISA (see “Save the ISA from the COC!” Workers Hammer No. 252, Spring 2024). Since then, Kshama Sawant—Seattle city council member from 2014 to 2024 and public face of U.S.-based Socialist Alternative (SAlt)—has also walked out the door, bringing several cadres with her.

Readers of ISA’s press would be justified in feeling confused about the ongoing crisis. The quits by Sawant and the Irish section have not even been acknowledged publicly, much less explained politically. As for those unlucky enough to have come across ISA factional documents, including Sawant’s “Why We’re Launching Revolutionary Workers & Leaving Socialist Alternative,” they’re more likely to have gotten a headache than any kind of clarity.

The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI)—from which the ISA originates—at least provides a clear explanation. According to them, the crisis in the ISA proves that everything their London leadership said was correct and that they were entirely justified in expelling everyone that didn’t agree with them in 2019. Of course, the CWI itself doesn’t exactly project energy and political confidence. Whereas the ISA’s trajectory resembles that of a crashing plane, that of the CWI looks more like a slowly sinking ship.

To really understand what’s happening in the ISA, it’s necessary to get a broader view. The internal turmoil it is going through is not an isolated incident but a symptom of the political crisis shaking the entire international Marxist left. Having ourselves gone through a long period of sectarian sterility followed by a violent organizational collapse, the ICL is well placed to comment. We were able to emerge politically reinvigorated from our own crisis by digging down to the roots of our disorientation, some of which went back to our very inception (see “Why the ICL Collapsed & How We Reforged It,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 68, September 2023).

Of course, this took a lot of work, and many may not have the patience and determination to undertake such a reorientation. In that case, there’s always the Grantite road of shoving big questions to the side, proclaiming a Revolutionary Communist International and shouting about communism in the subway. While this may look superficially attractive, we doubt it’s going to end well for them. So, we say to ISA and ex-ISA members determined to continue the fight for socialism: buckle up, there is no quick and easy fix, but there is a road to emerge stronger from this crisis.

Marxists and the Post-Soviet Period

For anyone with two eyes and ears, it’s obvious that the last 40 years have not been kind to the international Marxist left. Despite bursts of growth here or there, Marxists have much less social weight and influence than they did when the Soviet Union was still around. You only have to look at the average age of international Marxist leaders to see that much still rests on the fumes of the 1960s and ’70s. This weakness in the far left is itself a reflection of the constant setbacks in the workers movement over past decades. Most of the left acknowledges as much. For example, the ISA in its 2023 “Epoch of Multiple Crises” explains that:

“To varying degrees, the working class the world over continues to grapple with a serious crisis of political organization and leadership, and in mass consciousness, the perception that a viable alternative exists to capitalism remains weak, let alone what alternative that might be and how it could come about.”

While such descriptions are largely correct, they tend to present the retreats in the workers movement as a purely objective process—that is, one for which the left has no responsibility and no real means of affecting. In fact, to the extent that there is any attempt whatsoever to explain the crisis in Marxist parties, it is generally attributed to psychological reasons, such as “bureaucratic appetites” or “demoralization” at the possibility of revolution. In our conference document “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony & the Struggle for Workers Power” (see Spartacist [English edition] No. 68), the ICL has sought to go beyond such platitudes and give a political explanation for the crisis in the far left since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The document explains how the position of the working class was weakened through the destruction of the USSR and the resulting uncontested hegemony of U.S. imperialism. These objective defeats were in turn translated into a political and ideological offensive by the capitalists that took the form of liberal triumphalism. To justify their domination over the entire planet, the U.S. and its allies did not proclaim the supremacy of the white race or anything of the sort; rather, they used the cover of “freedom,” “democracy” and “human rights.” Some of the political establishment in Europe and the U.S. even proclaimed themselves to be for “open borders,” “anti-racism,” “ecology,” “gay rights” and “feminism.” From Clinton to Blair to the ANC, much of the neo-liberal offensive against the working class was carried out under the mantle of “progressive” liberalism.

Most leaders of the workers movement used this opportunist posturing by the ruling class to ditch class struggle and present themselves as respectable bourgeois liberals. The working class suffered defeat after defeat during this period, not due to repression but due to the co-optation of its leaders. This was not inevitable! It was necessary and possible to break workers from these leaders. Marxists needed to do this by showing how alliances with “progressive” capitalists in fact hindered the cause of all the oppressed, from workers to women to racial minorities.

But this was not done. Instead, the Marxist left positioned itself as the most consistent and radical wing of liberalism and supported all sorts of pro-capitalist politicians and trade unionists. From the anti-globalization and antiwar movements to Occupy, BLM and #MeToo, the so-called Marxists did not fight to break the struggles from the ideological and political leadership of liberals, but rather sought to incrementally push these movements to the left.

Meanwhile the working class has been devastated by the very people and institutions proclaiming lofty liberal principles—just think of the EU, Obama or Kamala Harris today. As a result, the working class increasingly hates liberals and everyone associated with them. Since the far left is mostly indistinguishable from the left wing of the ruling class (e.g., AOC, Sanders, Tlaib) many workers are moving to the right, seeing in racist and anti-woke demagoguery a “real” alternative to the status quo.

Leninism and the Revolutionary Party

Here we must take a step back and look at the tasks of Marxist parties in relation to mass movements. Of course, it is essential for revolutionaries to participate in the struggles of the working class and oppressed layers. It certainly will not do to denounce reformist movements while standing on the sidelines—something with which our own tendency has had long experience. But neither is it correct to fully merge with the reformist movement and liquidate the independent Marxist strategy—as the ISA does. There is a constant tension between these two poles and getting the balance right is the most difficult part of Marxist politics.

To untangle the problem, it is necessary to first be clear about the founding principles of Leninism. With the outbreak of World War I and the wholesale capitulation of European Social Democracy to social chauvinism, Lenin understood that opportunism within the labor movement wasn’t simply a petty-bourgeois deviation that would disappear as the workers movement matured, but a bourgeois trend within the working class. The experience of the war showed that the revolutionary impulses of the working class would be smothered as long as it remained under the hold of leaders committed to maintaining the capitalist order. From this, he concluded that there needed to be a split within the working class between its revolutionary and opportunist wings. This cornerstone of Leninism is the necessary starting point for approaching the tasks of the revolutionary party.

The second part of the problem is to concretely apply these principles in action. That is, to show in practice to the working class and oppressed that advancing their interests requires the leadership of a revolutionary workers party. The question of how to do this is necessarily concrete. It depends on what is happening in society, the consciousness of the working class and the strength of the revolutionary vanguard. However, whether we are speaking of the eve of the October Revolution or the interventions of tiny revolutionary forces today, the approach is essentially the same: to foster the progressive impulses of the masses and bring them into conflict with the leaders who restrain and divert these impulses.

What does this look like concretely? Let’s take BLM as an example. Mass protests erupted out of the righteous anger at cops murdering black people on a daily basis. This was certainly a progressive impulse. But this justified anger was channeled into all kinds of political dead ends, from cop reform to electing Biden. In this case, the task of revolutionaries was to support and push forward the struggle against police brutality and black oppression by pointing to how the movement was being held back by its liberal leadership. There is no contradiction between participating in the struggle to advance it and fighting for it to take a different course under a different leadership. In fact, whether an anti-police brutality, women’s and LGBTQ+ liberation or trade-union struggle, the only way to truly advance the struggle is to fight for a class strategy counterposed to that of current opportunist leaders.

Vanguard or Rearguard?

Needless to say, the approach described above is not that of the ISA or its predecessor, the CWI. In approaching BLM, Bernie Sanders, the trade-union or any other movement, the ISA perspective is not to break the masses animated by progressive impulses from the leaders who restrict and divert those impulses. Instead, the ISA seeks to ride the coattails of various movements and maybe push them a little to the left.

The current U.S. elections provide a case study for their practice. On the one hand, there is a real opening to make the case for an independent working-class party. On top of the deep hatred for both main parties, there is widespread revulsion at the genocide in Gaza. On the other hand, this objective pressure alone is not sufficient. For the working class to advance its class independence, there are important obstacles that must be taken on; how SAlt approaches these obstacles is highly indicative of how it views its tasks as a party.

The first and main obstacle is the trade-union bureaucracy. The trade-union movement is led by pro-capitalist leaders determined to defend the status quo of the two-party system. Thus, the question of building an authentic political expression of working-class interests is inseparable from the fight for a political split within the working-class movement itself. This is not how SAlt views the question. Their perspective is for the trade-union bureaucracy itself to build a new party. For example, they call on Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters and Shawn Fain of the UAW to stop supporting the Republicans and Democrats and “call a conference this Fall to launch a new pro-labor, anti-war party” (“We Need A New Party, Not A New Democrat,” 23 July).

Fundamentally, SAlt does not seek to replace the pro-capitalist leaders of the unions with socialists, but to exert “serious pressure from below to counteract the bourgeois pressure from above” (“2024 Socialist Alternative US Perspectives,” 23 August). What this denies is that the trade-union bureaucrats are not simply misguided, but materially and politically tied to the status quo. The fact that they can speak left and be militant under pressure from their base does not change their class allegiance. But SAlt gobbles up the leftist rhetoric wholesale, praising Fain for his speeches against billionaires while ignoring the fact that his posturing was wielded to restrain UAW workers during last year’s strike and then to support Biden and Harris. The point is simple: for the working class to be politically independent, it needs leaders who understand why this is necessary and are ready to fight for it.

The second key obstacle to building a working-class party is the illusion that if the Democrats moved slightly to the left, it would be possible to defeat Trump and advance the cause of the oppressed. This is essentially the perspective of the Green Party—to be a pressure on the Democrats, either to convince them to adopt a left-liberal-eco program or to replace them as the main left pole in U.S. politics. One must be utterly deluded to think that U.S. imperialism could ever be run by liberal hippies—whether inside or outside the Democratic Party. The only real perspective that can defeat reaction and advance the interests of the oppressed is one based on class struggle.

SAlt knows this, of course, but it doesn’t stop them from supporting Jill Stein and the Green Party. Why? Because they see “a big vote for Stein and [Cornel] West as the best way to open a discussion on the need to build an independent and viable workers party” (23 August). This makes absolutely no sense. The Greens (and West) have zero pretension of wanting to build a workers party or fight for socialism. A strong showing for them will reinforce illusions that Green politics are an alternative, not “open a discussion” on a workers party. Moreover, the Greens embody the very left-liberal brand of politics that have pushed the working class into the arms of reaction. Their very name symbolizes petty-bourgeois ecology, not class politics. Association with the Greens can only discredit socialists in the eyes of the working class.

But for SAlt (and Sawant), it is more important to latch onto the most popular left alternative to the Democrats than to engage in a political struggle within the unions, the DSA and the Palestinian movement for a class split in the upcoming elections. Instead of steering the class struggle away from the obstacles in its way, the whole approach of SAlt and the ISA is to surf any wave it can, even when it knows it is doomed to crash onto the shore.

While this approach can sometimes produce short-term success as regards recruitment and influence, it erases the role of the revolutionary party. This is clear in the current U.S. elections, where the ISA plays no independent role from the Green Party. This then begs the question: what is even the purpose of the ISA? You don’t need a revolutionary party to support the Greens or to push Shawn Fain to the left. And in fact, that is precisely the conclusion that Kshama Sawant has drawn. Why bother to have a broader program for socialism and against imperialism if the main task anyway is to push current movements a bit to the left? Much better to just focus on the six minimum demands of her Workers Strike Back.

At bottom, the disintegration of the ISA is simply the product of its program, which effectively writes off any kind of decisive role for the revolutionary party in current struggles. This problem is not unique to the ISA. In fact, if we go back to the ISA’s 2019 founding split, we can see that this very dynamic was already at play within the CWI.

The Irish section saw its main opportunities in surfing on the feminist movement, while the stodgy British wanted to keep waiting for the tide to come in behind the trade unions. Of course, any Marxist will agree that the struggle for women’s liberation and the trade-union movement must be merged. But this can only happen by fighting for a split with the feminists—whose moralism and idealist politics alienate workers—and a split with the trade-union bureaucracy—whose narrow economism betrays the fight against special oppression (see “Programme for NHS strikes,” Workers Hammer No. 249, Spring 2023). In contrast, trying to stay in the tow of feminists and the union bureaucracy can only divide the working class and tear an organization apart. We see this at play today. The same capitulation to feminism and trade-union opportunism that drove the split with the CWI is now driving the splits in the ISA.

Analysis and Program

What does any of this have to do with the question of liberalism and the post-Soviet period discussed above? Understanding the role of the revolutionary party is central to understanding the crisis in the ISA and the Marxist left more generally. However, this question plays out in a concrete historical setting. The failure of the left to build a strong revolutionary international party is the result of capitulating to the distinct political pressures of the period. Understanding the relation of U.S. imperialist hegemony and liberal ideology to the capitulations of the labor movement was—and remains—crucial to guiding the working class in its daily struggles. Only from such an understanding does it become clear that to fight imperialism one must fight in the workers movement against the influence of liberalism, which has fostered reaction and paralyzed struggle.

However, if—like the ISA—confronting the dominant illusions in the workers movement is not seen to be the party’s central task, then one’s view of the world will necessarily reflect these very illusions. Members of the ISA believe that their analysis of the “new Cold war” driven by the rise of “Chinese imperialism” is a unique view that distinguishes them from every other tendency. But, in fact, opposing “both sides” in the conflict between the U.S. and China is not unique at all, but is widespread among pacifist social democrats.

Without going into an in-depth refutation of the ISA’s analysis of the world situation here (see “The Class Nature of China,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 69, August 2024), it is enough to point out that by being totally oblivious to the reactionary role of liberalism in the workers movement the ISA finds itself disarmed in the face of imperialist propaganda against China and Russia. The truth is that the entire capitalist world system still rests on the U.S. and the institutions it set up after World War II. The hysteria in the bourgeois press against China serves to mask this fact and rally workers and the oppressed in defense of the rapidly disintegrating liberal status quo.

Which Road Forward?

Despite our fundamental difference with the political course of the ISA, we take no pleasure in its ongoing crisis, not least because it is the result of right-wing liberal pressures. A liquidation on the model of the International Socialist Organization in the U.S. would be a setback for the socialist movement.

Drastic organizational measures to curb internal tensions can be a way to slow the bleeding. However, it will not do anything to tackle the political causes of the current crisis. Such measures can only postpone the reckoning. The only way to a progressive outcome is through open and thorough political debate that does not shy away from going back to the very roots of the Militant tendency. The failure to do this following the expulsion from the CWI has directly led to the current predicament. It is essential that this mistake not be repeated.

There is a chance for the international Trotskyist movement to come out stronger from the crisis gripping the ISA. To this end—and despite the often-antagonistic history between our two tendencies—we propose that the ICL and the ISA open a frank and comradely discussion over the perspectives for the revolutionary movement in the current period. Only patient and principled debates between tendencies can put a stop to constant disintegration of revolutionary forces and lead to advances in reforging a true World Party of Socialist Revolution.