Demise of the De Leonist SLP?
Dec 24 2008 21:39
#32
Just a quick update and apology. I had thought that I was being censored off the deleonist-list, but go to find out, my message was simply too long, and the software was automatically rejecting it. I cut the message in half, and was able to post the first half, and hopefully the second half will appear tomorrow. Sorry for the accusation, which I deeply regret. Happy holidays to all, -KE
Dec 25 2008 11:36
#33
DeLeon in 1905 in his speech to the IWW first announced his support for the idea that the workers' industrial unions when capitalism ceases along with congress as well as the state being "adjourned sine die" would constitute the governmental structure for the whole country. This apparently is a take off or a direct appropriation from Bakunin from the 1870s. The SLP itself didn't officially adopt the idea into its party platform until the 1912 National Convention. But since that time the SLP has made SIU (socialist industrial unionism) its claim to fame and reason for existence to promote this goal.
I don't know who else has been discussing this idea, but the few members of the discussion forum originally started at www.deleonism.org now located because of technical problems at deleonism-list yahoo group site - have been discussing the actual practicality of the "state" becoming defunct. These are from my biased recollections:
At first there was an acknowledgement that even the end of class rule will not result in police functions not being needed. That went to - well if you are going to have a trained (for want of a better term) police force you need to have a civilian authority to whom the police report, and you have to have a civilian authority to write the laws. We concluded that a democratic body of the entire population instead of one being based upon labor constituencies would be the better mechanism for this.
We then concluded that this same body ought to have jurisdiction over writing environmental rules instead of leaving that to work constituencies. Guess what? In practice it pretty soon starts to look like a political state. And then the big realization, if you're going to end up with something that looks like a political state, why not just keep the state you have? Yes we know all about Marx's comments about the origin of the state - but so what? What do we care about what the origin of the state was?
The big problem with the state is capitalist or ruling class influence - so eliminate capitalist influence with worker collective control of the industrial means of production and distribution. What we ended up with was worker collective control of the industrial means of production with the same relationship to the political govt. as now exists by the capitalism to the political govt. (The workers and not the capitalists will be in the driver's seat.)
Then the question of how to get there. For the last 100 years the unquestioned models for the most part have been #1 direct action, or # 2 run candidates for office expressing the ideas of "socialism" or some combination of the two. But for the most part the most obvious method for changing the organic law of the country (to recognize workers' right to collective control of thr industrial means of production) - in the US anyway - is an amendment to the US Constitution. To amend requires 2/3 of both houses of congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures, or conventions in the states to propose an amendment and 3/4 of the state legislatures to approve. It would be an impossible task practically for several big reasons for a "party" of workers to pull this off. (mostly becase it would have to operate the state prior to the amendment becoming law with all of the log rolling and required compromising that would entail. A task at which a workers party would fail just as miserably if not more than capitalist parties do now.) Plan B. Don't try the party route - instead try to start building enough consensus to create a political force that congress and the legislatures would have to accede to.
How can that happen while at the same time of maintaining our idea of building "class consciousness"? My response (not necessarily the group's): drop class consciousness as an article of faith. A person can agree to the idea of collective worker control of the industries without "class consciousness".
Further I say that the God damned capitalists DO NOT WANT THE FUCKING INDUSTRIES in the first place. Thanks to 100 years of astute capitalist economic thought they don't think that workers produce wealth but that they (the capitalists) do. Besides at every turn they try to get rid of industries that actually make anything. Now the south is starting to get the rust belt jitters. (I saw a report that even in parts of China industrial jobs are being shedded sending them down to North Vietnam.)
Given enough work the idea of collective worker control of the industrial means of production ought to become as basic as is the notion of the constitution's (the people's) guarantee of due process and equal protection concerning at least de jure racial equality.
That's just a quick tour. Got to get back to work. Dave Searles
Dec 26 2008 21:23
#34
Thanks for the link www.deleonism.org I found the WIIU stuf f of interest. I'm not a De Leonist and not sympathetic to De Leonism, but I think there's some real unknown WIIU history out there.
Most folks may not realize, but it was actually the "Detroit IWW" (De Leonists) who did some mighty spade work amongst the Passaic, NJ woolen and the Paterson, NJ silk workers prior to the Chicago IWW's entry. Passaic organization was into 1912. I believe it was Local 5 of the "Detroit IWW" (Rudolph Katz, organizer) had some pretty strong shop organization in Paterson pretty much up to the famous silk strike of 1913. The "Chicago IWW" came in and out-organized the "Detroit IWW" in 1912. But it was actually the "Detroit IWW" with the meaningful shop organization.
From the little I know, the WIIU also had a following among furniture workers in Jamestown, NY. They also built some shop organizations there as well.
Anyway, if the De Leonists here have any further historical links to WIIU activities, that we be most appreciated by this scribe.
Apr 3 2009 13:21
#35
That which seals the doom of the SLP is the fundamental dishonesty of the rationale for the party's revolutionary SIU program, as proven abundantly at http://www.geocities.com/kenellis2020/lwlindex.html. The intellectual dishonesty of early party theoreticians was bound to infect many party members and sympathizers. While attempting to dialogue with some of them about their many indefensible theories, they resort to the same techniques perfected by the late SLP Nat'l Sec'y Arnold Petersen: they become indignant at the idea that their theories are flawed, they change the subject, and they attack the critic. No appeal to reason can persuade them to examine their theories with any degree of objectivity, so immersed are they in pure dogma. I recently tried to persuade a few apologists to examine some of Petersen's absurdities at the De Leonist forum, resulting mostly in apathy and hostility. See for yourself at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deleonism-list/ and go back to early 2009 to see how many times I was attacked for not immediately leaving the party after discovering problems with SLP theories in 1976, as if a tedious recounting of my personal history would have had any bearing on the theoretical subject matter. With human suffering escalating at a fearsome pace, and with the rich openly flaunting their greedy, rapacious, and murderous tendencies, it is a crying shame to observe the party remaining so attached to worthless theories, rendering them totally useless to workers. It is well past the hour to give SLP revolutionaries the message that they have slumped into a morally debased turpitude, devolving into a haven for intransigents to promote and defend a useless relic of a program. They will need lots of help if they are to evolve into usefulness, but, with unswerving irrational commitment to their SIU program, change might very well be impossible, assuring a silent, though ignominious, demise. Will the party disappear altogether due to a lack of moral and courageous leadership?
Apr 3 2009 13:27
#36
have you had dealings with the current sec'y? he's been in that position for maybe 25 years. has there been no change in the culture?
Apr 5 2009 16:40
#37
Yes, I did work with both the current Nat'l Sec'y and his predecessor, way back in 74-77. Bob worked as a writer for the Weekly People for most of that decade, and I was puzzled when he took a several month leave of absence, mostly in 1975. I remember his complaint being 'burnout'.
He wouldn't be likely to listen to much I have to say, because the brass only has to pay attention to party members and active sympathizers. I could only guess how party culture might have changed since the 70's, except to note that SLP activities have gone through a few downsizings since then. He was appointed to carry on the same failed policies of his predecessors, and I don't detect much variation from that.
May 4 2009 19:01
#38
Socialist Labor Party Closes Office
December 31st, 2008
The Socialist Labor Party, the original party of socialism in the United
States, stopped running candidates for partisan public office after 1981,
but has continued to publish its newspaper, The People, on a bimonthly
schedule. However, due to a shortage of funds, the paper hasn’t been
published since the March-April 2008 issue.
The SLP closed its national office, which had been in San Jose, California,
on September 1, and shipped a great deal of archival material to Duke
University and also to the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Both
institutions have good collections relating to the history of many minor
parties.
The SLP hopes to resume publication of The People in 2009.
http://www.ballot-access.org/2008/12/31/socialist-labor-party-closes-office/
May 4 2009 19:28
#39
duke. huh. i wonder when it'll be accessible.
the website's still up.
May 6 2009 20:34
#40
I'd recommend Frank Girard's, History of the Socialist Labor Party. It was written by him as an ex-member and has a very critical, albeit still sympathetic, look at the history of the SLP. Most interesting is the SLP's early history about how they ended up going from being the WPUSA, to becoming the SLP and eventually becoming the party of DeLeon.
May 6 2009 20:40
#41
where is it available?
May 7 2009 13:48
#42
May 7 2009 14:56
#43
right, thanks.
i think i read it, a long time ago.
Jun 30 2009 14:12
#44
The inanity of some political parties is awesome to behold. Some wingnuts would rather believe in various packs of lies than allow dissections thereof to challenge their self-assuredness. Some brains are happier repositories of ideological nonsense than easily verifiable truths, which explains why some De Leonist clubs might forever remain dedicated to a trivial pursuit, no matter how much the times cry out for a unified effort to rein in the burgeoning powers of predator capitalists.
Long-time Socialist Labor Party revolutionaries, understandably upset over the failure of their national organization to thrive and survive, would much rather blame some external factor (such as government interference) for their collapse than to blame their legacy of having dishonestly tried for decades to make Marx, Engels, and even Lenin appear to advocate a program akin to workers organizing themselves into Socialist Industrial Unions (SIU) and abolishing political government, a perfectly anarchist program that the communists M, E, and L obviously would have rejected.
And what of the Party writers who understood the revisionist basis of SLP theories, and yet maintained silence to prevent disrupting funding of the dissemination of their 'great socialist truths'? Will the complete disintegration of their enterprise release any of them to reveal secrets of the century-long defrauding and exploitation of Party followers? After all they have written over their lifetimes, the urge to chronicle the truth about the Party's betrayal of the workers might finally be unleashed, if only they can admit to themselves the depth of the fraud they helped perpetuate (and even freshly perpetrate) for the good of providing for themselves and their families - which behavior is not so unusual in this profane world, considering the many who have succeeded so well in fleecing the vast legions of the unaware.
What was it worth to the Party to inflate Lenin's appreciation of Daniel De Leon? SLP exaggerations must have inspired at least some proud (but gullible) disciples to part with some hard-earned dollars. What was it worth to falsely claim that 'the peasantry in less developed countries was the real target of Marx's proletarian dictatorship'? The Party's revisionist theories certainly helped defuse natural instincts to politically struggle against predator capitalists, along with their corrupt governments.
Now is the time to hear from those who knowingly helped perpetuate fraud, if only they can muster the courage to refute Party propaganda, despite the wrath inevitably due from the few true believers in 'the only hope for mankind', i.e., their SIU Program. Will the Party's knowledgeable intellectuals find the courage, or will they forever cower in the comfort of the rewards of having perpetuated an anarcho-syndicalist fantasy, cleverly marketed as Marx's revolutionary program 'for industrialized countries'?
Ken Ellis
Jun 30 2009 14:29
#45
I see some ex-SLPers have revived the name of the "Workers International Industrial Union"
http://www.wiiu.org/
Jun 30 2009 16:29
#46
good eye, syndicalist. thanks for the link.
.
Jun 30 2009 20:55
#47
Not ex-SLP syndicalist, it's the former animator of the Communist League with a new front organization for himself.
Jul 1 2009 00:47
#48
one of the mayday greetings in their paper is from a workers party that is a continuation of the CL. but how to square that with deleonism? the name of the secy-treasurer is familiar from The People.
Jul 1 2009 01:08
#49
i thought the texan was like a former slp branch secty or something, maybe he was a LC mole. They tried that stunt in the WSA as well.
Jul 1 2009 01:45
#50
syndicalist wrote:
i thought the texan was like a former slp branch secty or something.
yes. page 3:
http://www.slp.org/pdf/thepeople/Jan_03TP.pdf
Jul 1 2009 12:18
#51
The project was the idea of (the texan), who was never a mole , but a long-time SLP member, and prominent in the Houston (?) SLP. He contacted a lot of folks for this, it seems after he left the SLP (mostly on DeLeonist or broader boards - e.g., World in Common), and on one of them the CL fellow stepped up 'to help' - hmm. Always sounded suspicious to me, and I'm not sure that taking it over couldn't be their aim, but I'm not going to assume so as I watch carefully. Lennies suck, imo (just had to say it, though I'm sure most here agree - hope so)
Jul 1 2009 12:49
#52
petey wrote:
syndicalist wrote:
i thought the texan was like a former slp branch secty or something.yes. page 3:
http://www.slp.org/pdf/thepeople/Jan_03TP.pdf
Bingo...saw that at the time (I actually read the SLP press when it published).
Jul 1 2009 19:18
#53
syndicalist wrote:
(I actually read the SLP press when it published).
i subscribed to the people for a few years. i liked their singleminded focus on class.
Jul 1 2009 21:05
#54
I actually went to some of their classes on Marxism. They had an SLP study gude and all.
Jul 3 2009 04:04
#55
So I was just thumbing thru a copy of a recent gift: The De Leonist "Industrial Unionist" (1932-34), published by the Industrial Union League (IUL). The IUL later became the IU Party (the Brandon Brothers). The IUL was basically the expelled Section Bronx of the SLP.
Well, to the point...interesting stuff about IUL's industrial union in, of all places, Jamestown, NY ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_New_York ).... It was called the American Workers Union. Got into quite a bit of organizational stuff, I mean real workplace organizing.
If you're a political/labor history geek like myself, it's interesting. I'm not sure there's much written on this, is there?
Jul 5 2009 12:32
#56
Most of my experiences with C. Miller go back a few years, i.e., to when he was moderating the SLP-Houston forum. Not long after joining it, I started complaining about Petersen's 'proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry' canard and other unpleasant topics. It wasn't long after that I was censored off his forum. I have a long history of being censored off forums sporting an anarchist taint. They like to campaign for freedom and other good things, but are quick to crack down on those who disagree with them. They can't seem to shake off the bourgeois politics of exclusion. Arguing with them has given me a severe case of battle fatigue, because my efforts to educate have gone largely unrewarded, as though I have all along been dealing with people who are determined to get and keep their way, no matter what. They cannot and will not admit that the basis of their ideology since Bakunin has been mostly bunk, but containing enough intrinsic value to attract a few followers and corrupt leaders. Followers seem to enjoy a rather complete lack of curiosity about the legitimacy of opposing viewpoints, refusing to do their own research, thus condemning themselves to following charlatans and opportunists like De Leon and Petersen. But, my arguments with a lot of communists have been similarly just as unproductive. They also refuse to embrace the early Marx's inability to conceive of the abolition of private property except as the abolition of labor, so many communists also continue to shovel crap against the tide of history. Human labor creates private property, wrote Marx, so tring to abolish it before abolishing human labor makes no sense at all. But, not to despair, since the nanotech revolution promises to abolish human labor in another 20 years, so relief is on its way. Robots smarter than humans will soon change mass consciousness like never before possible. Socialist followers could find it embarrassing to find themselves languishing in the caboose, rather than driving the locomotive of history. The old paradigms are, in a word: kaput.
Jul 5 2009 21:29
#57
I can't see why anyome would kick you off of forums you are pure entertainment.
Jul 5 2009 21:53
#58
Hey Ken, what exactly are you saying?
Jul 6 2009 20:44
#59
Why, thank you, Jason. But, the censorship was very real, starting with the WSM forum in the early part of this decade. Their ideology must have felt a little threatened by my prose, so they gave me the bum's rush, and more than once. Eventually I gave up on them, moved to other forums, and was censored off other forums as well. Since 2004, I've done relatively very little at any forum, recognizing the futility thereof, so I got busy with other things closer to home. I did a little work at the De Leonist forum starting in Dec. 2008, but the dishonesty of some of the participants was just too intense for meaningful dialogue to occur. None of them was free to admit that Arnold Petersen took a quote from Lenin out of context in order to make Marx's proletarian dictatorship appear like a 'proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry'. Can you imagine the depth of Petersen's dishonesty to so twist Marxism? Everyone in the world (except for a tiny handful) understands Marx's dictatorship to be over the richest of the rich, and yet the SLP taught 'it was to be over the peasantry, and since agricultural labor in the USA is proletarianized, the USA therefore doesn't need a proletarian dictatorship over a peasantry that doesn't exist.' What a crazed way to argue against Marx's proletarian dictatorship. Redefine it, and then claim that 'the USA doesn't need it.' Is it any wonder why one of the SLP writers once told me that 'the communists will kill us if they ever came to power'? At that time, I didn't quite know what the writer had meant by that statement, but within a year I learned that the SLP was responible for spreading some rather outrageously blatant lies, and the cure for our crime of lying to the proletariat would have been to exterminate the whole sorry handful of us, if the more bloodthirsty of the communists were to have their way.
It really ought to make an ordinary person think hard about the significance of a party membership tolerating a lie as outrageous as a 'proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry'. For an SLP member to tolerate and even defend such a lie is just an incredible phenomenon, and yet, none of the ex-SLPers on the De Leonist forum was free to admit the depth of that lie, nor could they admit it was a lie at all. What does that mean? Were they too embarrassed to be caught with their pants down? Socialists, communists and anarchists are supposed to be tellers of truth, is that not the case? Lying to the people is the terrain of the Republican Party, and even the Dems. So, how could a SLP member possibly admit that they had been taught lies and repeated them like party stooges? Maybe better to play the role of the ostrich and pretend the problem never existed in the first place.
If every SLP member and ex-member were to maintain their state of denial, then how would it be possible for them to learn from their mistakes? If they can't even admit they made mistakes, then it becomes impossible for them to correct their mistakes, and then of course they are doomed to extinction as a movement. Maybe they think it's better to keep their noses in the air and blythely wallow their way to extinction than to admit mistakes and correct them. It takes effort to think hard, and who wants to sweat? The fact is: the SLP after the 1889 coup became further and further divorced from any semblance of reality, now so out of touch that the possibility of any of them wanting to 'haul out on the beach and scrape off the barnacles that so slow us down' is by now just completely out of the question. They have truly sailed off the edge of the earth and are heading straight down, which is the way it has to be in order to avoid what they dread the most: thinking. Better to accept the martyrdom of the gods and goddesses that they are and to forever pretend they were so bloody smart to follow De Leon and Petersen than to admit they were wrong and have to think about fixing mistakes. At their advanced ages, thinking is the last thing any of them want to do anyway.
Jul 6 2009 21:54
#60
ken - i for one believe your charges about the culture of the SLP when you were in it. the one place i (an outsider) have seen bills answer you (on Ballot Access News) he didn't contradict a word you said. however, he did point out that these charges have been around for 30 years. in the big picture the SLP is small game - which may be unfortunate: as i mentioned above, they kept a singleminded focus on class and never were tempted by (what i consider to be) mere liberalism.
Thanks for the question, Petey.
I had written: "the anarcho-syndicalist scam run by the SLP"
Capitalists well understand the advisability of keeping workers ignorant and out of politics. If SLP leaders could help steer workers away from politics by describing Marx's proletarian dictatorship as a tool that might have been fit for backward peasant countries like Russia (in Marx and Lenin's day), but unfit for an advanced country like the agriculturally proletarianized USA, then the SLP will have somewhat succeeded in steering some persuadable workers away from proletarian dictatorship, away from politics, away from the use of government to achieve their goals, etc. But, to Marx, the proletarian dictatorship was not an evil Stalinist dictatorship over the peasantry, as Petersen tried to represent it in his pamphlet, even though Stalin WAS very oppressive to his peasantry. Rather, the proletarian dictatorship in Russia TO MARX would have represented a worker-peasant alliance over the capitalists. In advanced democracies, the proletarian dictatorship would have represented nothing more sinister than workers getting involved in politics, electing their representatives to government offices, and peacefully attaining their goals. Remember Marx's 1872 speech at the Hague. By detecting that Petersen used a quote out of context to try to spin Lenin portraying the dictatorship the way Petersen spun it, I took my first step in understanding just how closely the SLP's program was allied with the interests of capitalists by steering workers away from overtly political solutions. For that reason and more, the SLP program is an anti-Marxist scam. To convince anyone of that, however, may require more than reading this single paragraph. Readers are urged to do far more research in order to more solidly educate themselves as to how a 'socialist' party could so convincingly fool so many people for more than a century. The SLP has been working for the interests of capitalists for a long time, and there are still quite a few people out there (and in here) who do not want you to understand that. They insist on repeating SLP myths for eternity, as well as suppress efforts to inform otherwise, just the way my National Office 'comrades' did to me in the 1970's. They knew what they were doing. It's up to us to do a little work to figure this out. It may take a little time to do so, but is it worth the effort to try to get our heads clear on important issues?