I promise to read these documents so that you don't have to. But in this case I failed. SR's Founding Document (pdf) is so dense that I couldn't get through all of it. Not that it's poorly written--I see Michael Schreiber's fingerprints all over it, and he is a good writer. It's just that you had to have been there--if you weren't privy to all the preceding arguments then it makes no sense. It's like reading through transcripts of a marriage counseling session for a couple about to get divorced.
It's really boring! Though I've read enough to have some things to say.
The name of the new grouplet, Socialist Resurgence, is a bit of a misnomer. Socialist Recrudescence would be more apt. If Socialist Action, a grouplet of about 100 worker-Bolsheviks, has failed to lead us to the post-revolutionary promised land, then it's hard to be optimistic about SR, which numbers about 40 comrades (if commenter John B is to be believed).
The split is about US military engagements abroad, notably in Syria.
Both SA and SR believe that the essential problem in Syria is something called "US Imperialism," though neither knows with any precision what that is. Where they disagree is with the characterization of Bashar al-Assad.
This is how SR describes SA's position:
I've addressed the issue myself, albeit in different terms, accusing SA of supporting any dictator--Putin, Assad, Maduro, Kim Jong Un--who for any reason opposes the United States. This puts them in bed with some really bad hombres, and renders them very unpopular among much of the American Left. For example, SA apparently believes that chemical weapons attacks blamed on al-Assad were really false flags. I'm not an expert on Syria, but I find false flag scenarios to be completely unconvincing. Too many people would have to be in on the conspiracy.
SR, by rejecting campism, gets away from the conspiracy theories, and is now able to pick and choose which dictators they want to support. That should make them more palatable to people they want to win over.
Of course they're both wrong. The Syrian conflict is only tangentially about "US Imperialism" (however poorly defined), as the US has no important strategic interest in the country. Obama's reluctance to enforce his humanitarian "red line" is proof enough, as is Trump's precipitous withdrawal of support for the Kurds.
The real problem in Syria is not "US Imperialism," but rather a sectarian/ethnic/religious conflict. The word "Alawite" is not mentioned in either SA's account of the split (discussed last week), nor in SR's Founding Document. This is truly bizarre. The Assad family are Alawites, a (heretical) Shi'ite sect comprising about 10% of the population, but which holds all important government and military posts.
Similar words--Christian, Druze, Kurd, and even Sunni--are not mentioned at all in SA's document. SR deigns to note the Syrian Sunni population only once.
And yet it is these ethnic distinctions that drive the whole conflict!
The reason SR gives for the massive destruction is ludicrous:
Recriminations within splitting groups are obviously personal and vicious (see aside below). This is no exception--they accuse each other of lying, acting in bad faith, being undemocratic, and not following the rules. In what might be called an Organizational Report (pdf), SR details their complaints against Comrade "Jeff M." (Jeff Mackler). I have no idea if what they say is true, but I will argue that it could be true, and for reasons that go beyond Mr. Mackler's turpitude.
Consider anti-Zionism. Narrowly interpreted this is a political opinion that can be held by honest people, e.g., the Szatmari Jews in Brooklyn. As I've said before, the Socialist Workers Party of my day was anti-Zionist is this sense.
But anti-Semites will also be anti-Zionist, albeit for disreputable reasons. So an anti-Zionist organization will attract not just honest, political anti-Zionists, but also true anti-Semites. Accordingly, SR accuses Mr. Mackler of collaborating with actual anti-Semites--which could be true. My opinion is, that by supporting Hamas, SA and SR have both crossed the Rubicon into true antisemitism. Mr. Mackler is just putting the icing on the cake.
The same problem holds for antiwar coalitions. The Trotskyist movement has long championed the united front, i.e, people who come together in support of a common cause, without necessarily agreeing on anything else. The classic, Trotskyist united front was the anti-Vietnam movement in the early 1970s, based on the simple slogan US Troops Out Now.
Similarly, the principal demand for today's United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) is Opposition to All US Wars and Interventions.
The problem with united fronts is they attract people with very different goals. Trotskyists, for example, opposed the US in Vietnam because we wanted the other side to win. Other people within the coalition were committed pacifists: they opposed any war and didn't want anybody to win. And yet others were classic liberals--the kind of folks who voted for Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern. They just opposed the war in Indochina. Yet the united front demonstrations brought all of them together into one big march.
The problem with today's UNAC is that the tent has gotten too big. SA still wants al-Assad to win, and the pacifists are still pacific. But also, there is now a crew dedicated isolationists--people like Alex Jones of InfoWars, or even pundits like Pat Buchanan, who have opposed US involvement in every war since Korea. Then there are people who don't care about al-Assad, but really want Putin to win! SR, like Trump, just wants the US to withdraw--they don't seem to know who they want to actually win.
The dispute between SA and SR is about just how big the united front tent should be. SR accuses SA (and Jeff Mackler in particular) of collaborating with some truly unsavory people. Mr. Mackler's defense is that his people weren't initially aware of the unsavory types at the conference (in Russia), and never had anything to do with them.
A united front isn't stable. And Trotskyist organizations aren't stable, either. They tend to split apart.
An aside about splits:
The Dunbar Number is the maximum size of a human group based only on shared kinship or friendship--e.g., a group of hunter gatherers. Any group larger than that requires some institutional structure and bureaucracy in order to function. The size of the Dunbar number varies from 50 to 150, with the higher numbers only possible when there is an external threat--e.g., war with a neighboring group--that makes the big group advantageous. But the bigger the group, the more time they have to spend on "social grooming" in order to stay together.
It appears that Trotskyist grouplets rarely exceed the Dunbar number. Which means that, despite their elaborate constitutions and procedures, they only cohere because of personal friendships and reciprocity agreements. Once the group gets too big, or personal relations are in any way strained, the group splits into competing bands.
Dunbar groups are usually led by a chief who holds office by lifetime appointment, or until a younger man (they are always men) takes his place. Jack Barnes is boss of the Socialist Workers Party since 1972, while Jeff Mackler rules Socialist Action since 1983. This month we inaugurate the new leader of Socialist Resurgence, Michael Schreiber, who I predict will lead them for decades to come.
Anthropologists take note: Trotskyist grouplets are a good proxy for hunter-gather tribes, and probably a lot cheaper to study.
Further Reading:
The split is about US military engagements abroad, notably in Syria.
Both SA and SR believe that the essential problem in Syria is something called "US Imperialism," though neither knows with any precision what that is. Where they disagree is with the characterization of Bashar al-Assad.
- SA thinks he is an agent of resistance--a third world leader heroically defending his country from "US Imperialism." As such, he deserves to be defended and supported.
- SR thinks he is a cat's paw for "US Imperialism." That is, instead of being part of the solution, he is part of the problem. Al-Assad should be opposed by all good revolutionaries.
The world is polarized between two great forces or camps. One is U.S. imperialism, which is trying to actively foment regime change almost everywhere in the world. The other great force is an “Axis of Resistance,” anchored by Russia, and maybe China, and this alliance includes the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, and Syria, as well as organizations like ALBA. They implicitly and explicitly give political support to capitalist regimes.They refer to this as campism.
I've addressed the issue myself, albeit in different terms, accusing SA of supporting any dictator--Putin, Assad, Maduro, Kim Jong Un--who for any reason opposes the United States. This puts them in bed with some really bad hombres, and renders them very unpopular among much of the American Left. For example, SA apparently believes that chemical weapons attacks blamed on al-Assad were really false flags. I'm not an expert on Syria, but I find false flag scenarios to be completely unconvincing. Too many people would have to be in on the conspiracy.
SR, by rejecting campism, gets away from the conspiracy theories, and is now able to pick and choose which dictators they want to support. That should make them more palatable to people they want to win over.
Of course they're both wrong. The Syrian conflict is only tangentially about "US Imperialism" (however poorly defined), as the US has no important strategic interest in the country. Obama's reluctance to enforce his humanitarian "red line" is proof enough, as is Trump's precipitous withdrawal of support for the Kurds.
The real problem in Syria is not "US Imperialism," but rather a sectarian/ethnic/religious conflict. The word "Alawite" is not mentioned in either SA's account of the split (discussed last week), nor in SR's Founding Document. This is truly bizarre. The Assad family are Alawites, a (heretical) Shi'ite sect comprising about 10% of the population, but which holds all important government and military posts.
Similar words--Christian, Druze, Kurd, and even Sunni--are not mentioned at all in SA's document. SR deigns to note the Syrian Sunni population only once.
And yet it is these ethnic distinctions that drive the whole conflict!
The reason SR gives for the massive destruction is ludicrous:
Following the Russian bombing of neighborhoods and hospitals in support of the murderous Assad regime, Russian companies were granted billions of dollars in contracts to rebuild Damascus, Aleppo, and other devastated cities. The reconstruction efforts were part of Assad’s larger gentrification plan to clear the cities of the working poor and open up areas to international financial institutions.Ah yes! Russian bombing as an effort in urban renewal, as if Wall Street were eager to invest in Aleppo. Why not call it for what it is: ethnic cleansing. Neither of my Trotskyist friends have stumbled upon that term.
Recriminations within splitting groups are obviously personal and vicious (see aside below). This is no exception--they accuse each other of lying, acting in bad faith, being undemocratic, and not following the rules. In what might be called an Organizational Report (pdf), SR details their complaints against Comrade "Jeff M." (Jeff Mackler). I have no idea if what they say is true, but I will argue that it could be true, and for reasons that go beyond Mr. Mackler's turpitude.
Consider anti-Zionism. Narrowly interpreted this is a political opinion that can be held by honest people, e.g., the Szatmari Jews in Brooklyn. As I've said before, the Socialist Workers Party of my day was anti-Zionist is this sense.
But anti-Semites will also be anti-Zionist, albeit for disreputable reasons. So an anti-Zionist organization will attract not just honest, political anti-Zionists, but also true anti-Semites. Accordingly, SR accuses Mr. Mackler of collaborating with actual anti-Semites--which could be true. My opinion is, that by supporting Hamas, SA and SR have both crossed the Rubicon into true antisemitism. Mr. Mackler is just putting the icing on the cake.
The same problem holds for antiwar coalitions. The Trotskyist movement has long championed the united front, i.e, people who come together in support of a common cause, without necessarily agreeing on anything else. The classic, Trotskyist united front was the anti-Vietnam movement in the early 1970s, based on the simple slogan US Troops Out Now.
Similarly, the principal demand for today's United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) is Opposition to All US Wars and Interventions.
The problem with united fronts is they attract people with very different goals. Trotskyists, for example, opposed the US in Vietnam because we wanted the other side to win. Other people within the coalition were committed pacifists: they opposed any war and didn't want anybody to win. And yet others were classic liberals--the kind of folks who voted for Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern. They just opposed the war in Indochina. Yet the united front demonstrations brought all of them together into one big march.
The problem with today's UNAC is that the tent has gotten too big. SA still wants al-Assad to win, and the pacifists are still pacific. But also, there is now a crew dedicated isolationists--people like Alex Jones of InfoWars, or even pundits like Pat Buchanan, who have opposed US involvement in every war since Korea. Then there are people who don't care about al-Assad, but really want Putin to win! SR, like Trump, just wants the US to withdraw--they don't seem to know who they want to actually win.
The dispute between SA and SR is about just how big the united front tent should be. SR accuses SA (and Jeff Mackler in particular) of collaborating with some truly unsavory people. Mr. Mackler's defense is that his people weren't initially aware of the unsavory types at the conference (in Russia), and never had anything to do with them.
A united front isn't stable. And Trotskyist organizations aren't stable, either. They tend to split apart.
An aside about splits:
The Dunbar Number is the maximum size of a human group based only on shared kinship or friendship--e.g., a group of hunter gatherers. Any group larger than that requires some institutional structure and bureaucracy in order to function. The size of the Dunbar number varies from 50 to 150, with the higher numbers only possible when there is an external threat--e.g., war with a neighboring group--that makes the big group advantageous. But the bigger the group, the more time they have to spend on "social grooming" in order to stay together.
It appears that Trotskyist grouplets rarely exceed the Dunbar number. Which means that, despite their elaborate constitutions and procedures, they only cohere because of personal friendships and reciprocity agreements. Once the group gets too big, or personal relations are in any way strained, the group splits into competing bands.
Dunbar groups are usually led by a chief who holds office by lifetime appointment, or until a younger man (they are always men) takes his place. Jack Barnes is boss of the Socialist Workers Party since 1972, while Jeff Mackler rules Socialist Action since 1983. This month we inaugurate the new leader of Socialist Resurgence, Michael Schreiber, who I predict will lead them for decades to come.
Anthropologists take note: Trotskyist grouplets are a good proxy for hunter-gather tribes, and probably a lot cheaper to study.
Further Reading:
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