It's the data you've all been waiting for!
The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) has finally released the results of the Spring sub drive and fund drive in a chart labeled Campaign to expand reach of ‘Militant,’ books, fund March 12-May 17 (final chart).
Seriously, I keep dinging the paper for not providing any statistics about their membership--probably because the numbers are too depressing. But we can uncover a good deal of information by doing some analysis.
Here is a copy of my spreadsheet.
The goal is to determine how many comrades are in each branch. The idea is that the number of subs sold should be proportional to the number of comrades. Accordingly, we are only interested in subs sales attributed to individual branches, so I have omitted the 40 subs sold at book fairs, and also the $1,300 raised directly through the National Office.
“The party is taking steps now to reinforce branches of the Socialist Workers Party in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Miami and Seattle,” Studer said. This is possible because party cadres in Albany have made themselves available to transfer to these cities, get jobs in union workplaces, and help to strengthen the forces the party already has in these cities, all important centers of working-class politics in the United States.
This suggests that were four comrades living in Albany who are moving to the listed cities. As you will see, those towns are in need of reinforcements.
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| Forum in Albany April 30 heard John Studer, speaking, SWP National Committee member and editor of Militant. From left, other speakers were Beverly Bernardo, Communist League in Canada; chair Jacob Perasso; and Alex Huinil, SWP Albany branch organizer. (Source, Credit: Militant/Laura Anderson) |
Note from the photo that Mr. Huinil is much younger than the typical SWP demographic--so the Party must have recruited somebody during their sojourn in New York's capital city.
Here are some facts about branches. In my day, the minimum size of a branch was five comrades. Perhaps that number has shrunk a bit, but it can't shrink by very much. That's because the Party insists that each branch acquire a physical location--we called them "Halls," which typically include meeting space such as that depicted above. The rent for this real estate must be borne by the comrades in the branch, and splitting it less than five ways seems onerous. So I think the five-comrade-minimum, while perhaps not fixed in stone, is nevertheless a serious number.
(The Party spends a huge fraction of its income on rent. Is this a good investment? I don't quite see the payoff, but I think it's a tradition since the Party was founded in the 1920s. No other organization on my Beat follows suit.)
In order to calculate the number of comrades per branch, I need to estimate the total size of the Party. Commenter John B. has suggested about 100 comrades. I have chosen a slightly higher number--120 comrades, for reasons I'll explain.
Given that, then the average number of subs sold per comrade is 10.71, as shown on the bottom row of my spreadsheet. That's simply 1285 divided by 120. Then of course it's easy to calculate the number of comrades per branch--just take the number of subs sold and divide it by 10.71. That data is given in the column labeled Sold/120. You will note that there are (were), e.g., 3.5 comrades in Albany and 11.8 in Chicago, etc. Obviously it's impossible for a branch to have a fraction of a comrade, so I have rounded those numbers to the nearest integer, shown in the column labeled # comrades--which answers our query.
So what could go wrong? Lots of things:
- It all depends on my estimate of the total number of comrades, which might be wrong.
- It assumes that the average subs sold per comrade for the Party as a whole also holds for each individual branch. That is, e.g., no branch has any super-salespersons who distort the average.
- It assumes that all comrades are true worker-Bolsheviks (i.e. voting members of the Party) and not sympathizers who also go on Militant sales. As a practical matter this distinction might not matter much.
So I will stick with my estimate of 120 total comrades.
Now let's briefly turn our attention to the fund raising effort. I commented on this a long time ago (2012) when the fund quota was $100K, and most of the money was used to pay salaries to Jack Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters. This year they raised over $140K, and I don't know how the money is spent.
So if the total amount raised is proportional to the number of comrades, then it should also be proportional (by hypothesis) to the number of subs sold. The plot below shows a graph--and there is considerable scatter. What gives?
I'll argue that comrades living in cities with more billionaires earn more money than comrades living in cities with fewer billionaires. That's because richer people tend to pay higher salaries and can afford to be more generous. The data bears that out. The yellow data point below (above the trend line, and therefore paying disproportionately more) represents Seattle. The red point is for Oakland (the Bay Area) and the green point is data for New York. These are the three big billionaire cities. By contrast, the point furthest below the trendline comes from Cincinnati--91 subs and $5800.
Mr. Huinil was recruited somewhere else and transferred to Albany. He's been in the SWP around 10 years. You're right that he is one of their younger members (so is Mr. Perasso, for that matter).
ReplyDeleteAlthough I think the party membership is a little less that 110, I think your rule of thumb for member/subscriptions is more or less true. Keep in mind that "Organized Supporters" are mobilized for these sub drives also. So I hold by my guesstimate of around 100 official members.
There isn't a strict correlation between members of a branch and the amount of money raised in fund drives. The reason for this is that some localities, like Seattle or the Bay Area, have a lot of ex-members who can still be hit up for contributions.
There were 3 Huinil family members If I recall correctly, including Freddy and Alex. I can't confirm there was a third by a quick search in the militant. But they were recruited out of Atlanta and I think they span two generations. regarding the size of the Albany branch, I suspect it's much higher than four. They're likely are some married couples who may go to a certain town together. But in any case the four branches may not account for everyone who is going to move. And there may be more than one moving to any given town. Also, given the large number of national office types, like Barnes and Waters, in New York, I doubt they are all participating in militant sales.
DeleteThanks to John and Bob for helpful comments. I can accept John's number (110) as long as there are about 10 sympathizers willing to sell subs as full members do. The data can't resolve that distinction. But we need 120 members in order to get the minimum branch size up close to five. On the other hand, Bob can't be right that there are a whole lot of excess comrades present in Albany. If that were true, it wouldn't be necessary to close the branch down. Therefore, my 120 number represents both a minimum and maximum estimate of the number of comrades. Let's say the true number is between 110 and 130.
ReplyDeleteThere were more than four members in the Albany branch. I've met at least six of them in the past year. I wasn't able to make the last MLF where they discussed dissolving the branch, although I wish I could have. Really nice group of people.
ReplyDeleteI'm not gonna argue with people who actually know something. Eldee Stephens clearly is familiar with the Albany branch. My error is I insisted on the law of averages--i.e., every branch must have a membership that corresponds exactly to the number of subs sold. That obviously isn't always true--Albany apparently has more comrades than that proportion suggests. But that means some other branch must have fewer.
ReplyDeleteI'm heartened by Eldee Stephens referring to my former comrades as a "really nice group of people." That is certainly how I remember them, and political differences notwithstanding, that's likely what I'd think of them now were we to meet again.
I see the Miami branch (4-5 members) had to give up their pricey headquarters. They're back to operating out of a P.O. Box.
ReplyDelete