do solnets have to be apolitical/multi-tendency to be effective?

this isn't something i'm personally experienced in, but i'd say it's important they be multi-tendency in the sense that they are open in membership to any worker who wants to join, with a few exceptions (fascists, white supremacists, etc.). if not you won't find many people to sign up. but it's equally important that they use direct democracy for all their organizing and decision making, which is an anarchist principal but one that you don't need to be anarchist to support.

No, they don't need to be apolitical, although that's a vague and tricky term. What do these people mean by apolitical?

If we're talking about requiring belief in libertarian communist revolution as a condition for membership, yeah I do think that would be an obstacle to building a successful solnet of any size. At least under current conditions, in my opinion that level of political specificity only makes sense for propaganda groups. SolFed folks might disagree. But anyway that's one extreme, and apolitical is the other. SeaSol currently is somewhere in between, and occasionally gets accused of being apolitical but really isn't.

But yeah, I too would be interested to hear from SolFed folks about how they've handled organizing struggles with folks who don't meet the ideological qualifications to join SolFed. Does it involve creating a broader (temporary?) structure beyond SolFed within which these people have a vote? Or what?

I don't think Solnets should have to necessarily push a certain tendency, but I do think that they should involve an open forum of political discussion in conjunction with winning demands and running campaigns. I see it kinda like a workers councils - you don't have to be a communist to participate, but communist politics should be involved.

Outright reactionaries and opportunists should be banned however.

Just quickly, there seems to be a bit if an urban myth that SolFed has/advocates some ultra tight ideological line. I dunno where this comes from - the recent book went to great lengths to stress that politics isn't reducible to ideology etc. Membership isn't and shouldn't be based on identity, for an a-s union or a SolNet.

Imho what matters is willingness to work in accordance with the organisation's politics. If a landlord comes to a SolNet seeking help they'll be told to shove it, cos the basis of a SolNet is class struggle for our side. If someone wants to pursue exclusively legal action, they'll probably be signposted elsewhere cos the SolNet is based on direct action. If someone wants to use the credibility and infrastructure of a SolNet to canvass for a politician, they're presumably gonna be told no, cos that's not what the org is for. If someone wants a SolNet to represent them/act in their stead... etc.

All of that is political content. None of it requires people to identify as an anarchist (though arguably, none of it requires people to become dues paying members either). Imho, if you don't write this stuff down in a constitution/rule book/hand book you'll sooner or later run into problems. I can see the merits of not defining it in overly ideological ways or exclusively to one tradition, but I don't think you can do without the political content, if that makes sense?

I'll have a crack at this.

Basically, the short answer is to not over-emphasize membership. In my local, when we've been approached by a worker or a group of workers who want support, we decide if we have the capacity to take it on. If we do, we create a rough plan of action and inform the worker(s) in question that they will always have the final say regarding any decisions that are made in their campaign. We're there primarily in a support role and as long as no requests are made that interfere with the aims/constitution of SF, we intentionally allow them to guide the struggle.

If folks are especially unpoliticized, we do try to make clear that we expect them to participate in other solidarity actions which SF may be involved in now or in the future.

We've actually had some problems regarding all this and within my local we've had to work out some structures and policies to avoid some problems that we've had in the past, but the principals are fundamentally the same.

The priority of workers organising at the workplace should not have the politics of ideologies interfering in that organising is the position of the SPGB.

Of course, the ideal union would be one that recognised the irreconcilable conflict of interest between workers and employers, that had no leaders and was organised democratically and controlled by its members, that sought to organise all workers irrespective of nationality, colour, religious or political views, first by industry then into One Big Union and which struggled not just for higher wages but also for the abolition of the wages system.The trouble is that this cannot become a full reality till large numbers of workers are socialists. In other words, you can’t have a union organised on entirely socialist principles without a socialist membership.

The idea of forming a separate socialist union such as once proposed by the SLP and later the Communist Party in one of its ever-changing party-lines was rejected in favour of working within the existing unions and trying to get them to act on as sound lines as the consciousness of their membership permitted. The logic behind this position was that, to be effective, a union has to organise as many workers as possible employed by the same employer or in the same industry, but a socialist union would not have many more members than there were members of a socialist party. In a non-revolutionary situation most union members would inevitably not be socialists but would not need to be. A union can be effective even without a socialist membership if it adheres to some at least of the features of the ideal socialist union already outlined, and will be the more effective the more of those principles it applies.

One of the early objections the SPGB had to the IWW was its divisive outright opposition to the pure and simple reformist trade unions but that has disappeared NOW by the IWW's adoption of the dual-card policy and i believe it has also accepted the principles of agreed contracts of employment and even state recognition and registration so for all practical purposes it now operates as a union and an umbrella for workers of many political persuasions and not just the one of “anti-politics”.

The SPGB have always insisted (in agreement with the IWW constitution that "the IWW refuses all alliances, direct and indirect, with existing political parties or anti-political sects") that there should be a separation and that no political party or should , or can successfully use, unions as an economic wing. At least not until a time very much closer to the Revolution when there are substantial and sufficient numbers of socialist conscious workers and considerable over-lap of memberships . And for the foreseeable thats far off in the future .

Just to add, in my experience the insistence on being 'apolitical' comes from politicos (whose identity is bound up with 'politics'), wanting to work with 'normal people' (who are presumed, in their absence, to be 'apolitical' - see also 'the man on the street' - a highly ideological construct). That is to say I think this discussion arises out of a specific context of subcultural marginalisation - which it laudably seeks to break out of - and/or highly schematic discussions of the different 'levels' argued out as a series of a priori logical deductions.

But in practice, people who want to be active in a SolNet obviously share certain values. There's always-already a minimal political content. I think there are at least unwritten red lines too, that would cause a shitstorm and/or a split. I think it's healthy to develop these organically rather than off-the-shelf (in my SF local, we took the existing constitution as a starting point and have developed a local handbook that abides by it, but elaborates in various ways).

Having worked in plenty of broader groups too, i think political differences will come to the fore as soon as the immediate task at hand is over (or even before). Some things are just incompatible and can't really be sustained in one organisation (steering committees vs participatory democracy, legal services vs collective action, electoralism vs direct action etc). Not resolving these fundamentals means infighting and/or paralysis ime. Whereas splitting them out into separate groups which can support each other let's everyone get on with their thing (e.g. some legal experts setting up an independent legal advice thing, which a SolNet can signpost people to when appropriate).

But to be clear, this is not about 'ideological purity' or something, it's about a shared set of principles which make collective organisation possible and productive. In my SF local i don't even know that a majority would self-define as anarcho-syndicalists. I mean, I'm as much marxist as anarchist. Plenty of people don't really like labels at all, and that's fine. If 'politics' has three levels - shopfloor/organsiational/ideological - absent the first two it operates mainly as an identity game of shibboleths etc. With the first two, the latter is just a coherent articulation of how and why things are done that way (e.g. having a coherent philosophy - anarcho-syndicalism, anarchism, revolutionary unionism, wobblyism, SeaSolism, whatever - which links means to ends and the short and long term goals).

If unions are struggle pasta, i don't see why they should be completely bland. Maybe you don't have to go full carbonara, but what about a little seasoning? If the goal is to get it eaten, wouldn't that go down slightly better, whilst still appealing to the majority of eaters? Unison is like school dinner pasta, no one wants to eat that unless they have to. Everyone would much rather eat initially basic homemade pasta, increasing their servings of pro-worker sauce over time, they just don't know it yet.

edit: this post addressed to spgb

edit: actually i think i'm making myself too hungry on these pasta analogies, need to quit this thread!

I'm interested in how the SETI readings go: http://seticabal.wordpress.com That is, the use of this form of educational with the integration and radicalization of Seasol members, activists, those who were helped by Seasol.

In reply to Joseph Kay:
Sorry to perpetuate urban myths! My assumptions about SolFed's ideological membership criteria actually came from my [mis?]reading of Fighting for Ourselves, and particularly its critique of the CNT:

Defining the problem this way appears to imply that the solution is stricter ideological membership qualifications. If that's not SolFed's actual practice, great, but then how is SolFed's policy different from the CNT's?

I don't want to derail too much, so I'll try and link this back to the OP at the end.

My reading of FFO is:

1) the CNT tried to be both a union uniting revolutionary workers (and peasants) and the organisation that united all of those classes for the purpose of revolutionary transformation and post revolutionary social organisation.

2) This created a tension within the organisation between recruitment on a purely economic basis (all workers, all peasants), and the union's revolutionary anarchist politics. This manifested itsekf as the emergence of political factions vying for control (first the reformists, then the FAI as a counter, to name that the most significant).

3) However, the solution wasn't simply ideological purity. If that was a defence we wouldn't have seen FAIistas joining the government.

4) Rather the solution is to understand the revolutionary union as simultaneously political and economic - a workers organisation based on revolutionary anarchist principles; and not to equate thus with the more transient organs of particular struggles (from workplace committees in our workolaces today to mass meetings in big disputes to a system of free councils in an openly insurrectionary phase of struggle.

5) The role of the revolutionary union is to organise at the point of production (and many SFers woukd say reproduction, including housing, domestic labour, unemployment, anti racist and anti sexist struggles), in accordance with its political principles. That involves organising things like workplace committees or mass meetings as appropriate for the union to organise and/or catalyse struggles beyond its membership.

6) Politics can be understood on three interconnected levels, borrowing from van der Linden iirc; the shopfloor, organisational, and ideological. There's a discussion in there of the relative importance of each, their interconnections, and where SF fits now and is aiming to develop in future.

I'm probably not doing it justice here (and summarising risks being overly schematic). But to bring this back to the OP, I'd say SolNets are political and should develop that political content in a revolutionary way, but adopting a paper commitment to this or that ideological position is probably the least important part of that process. It's even possible certain kinds of ideological jockeying could retard that process of political development, which needs to be an ongoing and open process without abandoning principles altogether for the kind of 'post-ideological pragmatism' so common in the neoliberal era.

Does that make sense? tl;dr version: politics =/= ideology.

FWIW the SF broadening of the scope of 'politics' contra Lenin probably owes an unacknowledged debt to feminism, but that's another tangent...

dp

I really wanted to get into this topic, but I've been busy being indoctrinated at college but briefly anyways...

@ Joseph Kay

I don't know if this should be a new thread, or if there's already a thread that addresses this issue, but what do you see the role of anarcho-syndicalists? Don't you think they should still be organised into ideologically-specific political organisations?

I don't think anyone could deny the fact that a union (revolutionary or not; minority or mass) is both economic and political. And they should be seen or understood as carrying both of those functions. But that doesn't rule out the need for anarcho-syndicalists to be organised amid the rank-and-file membership. Members can be militant, but they can be reformist at the same time as well.

FFO tried to paint it as though (in the case of the Spanish revolution) anarchists created a separation between politics and economics (maybe they did), and they think they fixed it with the concept of a 'political-economic organisation', which seems to based on a certain way of acting militantly. But can that even sustainably last?

I don't know, it seems like it will only end up being an organisation that attracts a few number of militantly committed workers (even though its non-ideological) of many political stripes. Or... I think I'm confusing myself. It seems as though the content required will still attract a small and specific sort of working people.

FAO of Harrison

Occasionally, a chilli is dropped into the blandness of union activity.

The Indian companion party has to deal with the fact that the trade union movement there is based upon party afffiliation and so advocates "... to meet in regular general assemblies, discuss and debate all that matters keeping ears and minds open and decide to take such steps as deemed useful. In case a strike is to be declared, they would need a strike committee to be formed of recallable delegates elected and mandated in the general assembly-thus retaining the ultimate control in their own hands.Where there are many rival trade union shops in a single factory or workplace operated by many capitalist political parties, a socialist worker can neither keep on supporting the one he is in, nor go on seeking membership of one after another or all at the same time, nor can he open his own "socialist" trade union instead. What he can, and should, do as an immediate perspective, is to try to form a "political group" with like-minded fellow workers and campaign for a class-wide democratic unity as stated above..." Manifesto of the World Socialist Party (India), March 1995.

The Socialist Party of Canada's participation the Canadian OBU split from the mainstream unions is often overlooked.

In the SPGB some members in the 30s were active in a breakaway London buses union much to the displeasure of the Communist Party.

A general rule is exactly that, not something that can be laid down for all circumstances. Add to stock, seasoning and spices to taste.

Damn straight.

I think this is a really important point. All unions are political, but the trade unions try to seperate political activity (voting, lobbying, whatever) from economic activity (disciplinaries and grievances, industrial action). And in the case of American, British, and European trade unions, there is a default political stance of supporting the least shit of the mainstream political parties or somehow trying to push them left. But of course politics is always there--and it's fairly logical that reformist unions are going to support reformist politics.

Yeah, I'd say all unions are in some way political. But as Chilli says, reformist politics means on the one hand, farming 'politics' out to parties, which operate as governments-in-waiting, while internally being organised to mirror the structures they notionally oppose (with corporate hierarchies, boards of directors on 6 figure salaries, paid managers, chains of command etc). Whereas for anarchist/revolutionaries, the class struggle (i.e., union activity, as per FFO) and not parliament, is the site of working class politics. I think it was ocelot who quoted the late Tony Cliff on the need to be 'symmetric' to the state, I think the symmetric/asymmetric distinction is a very useful way to think about the organisational aspect of what is often discussed as leftist/communist or reformist/revolutionary.

Probably a tangent, but I'm not that convinced by the need for specific political organisations. That said, there isn't a single answer valid across all places and contexts. They might make sense in some places and times and not others. I mean, in places with large, broadly libertarian social movements (MST? Abahali?), specific political work may be a way to develop anarchism/libertarian communism as a tendency in the class. In the contemporary english speaking world, it tends to mean work within the trade unions. I think you can do that as a proto-union org anyway (e.g. SolFed industrial strategy), and it's better that way cos you can develop the infrastructure and capacity for independent action.

I also think technology - forums, email lists, social media, blogs etc for discussion and publication - has squeezed some of the traditional roles filled by political organisation (in terms of developing ideas and getting them out there). But really it's for advocates of specific organisation to make the case, rather than me to dismiss it. In the specific context of revolutionary unions or SolNets, I think there's a danger that a specific political org could have the (unintended) consequence of pulling political discussion out of the wider group rather than developing its politics. e.g. people would go to separate meetings and lists to do their 'politics' and see the other org as just for 'practice', when i think both need to be intimately related. I think something like the Recomposition blog tries to avoid that, operating as an informal tendency within the IWW and likeminded friends rather than a tight formal organisation with detailed positions, organisational discipline etc.

I wanted to clarify this re: reformism.

While some unions are unabashedly reformism, stated ideology is largely insignificant to the role that such organisations fulfil in the workplace. Trade unions fill a fundamentally mediatory role, and given that role, there's little surprise that they develop reformist policies--even if they have an ostensibly revolutionary constitution or a red leadership.

just reading along with this thread, and wondering...

=/= ?
does that mean "equals" or does it mean "does not equal"?

i'm quite convinced of the need for anarchist-specific organizations to work within the broader class struggle movement of unions, solidarity networks, revolutionary assemblies and councils, etc. my views on this are pretty much straight out of black flame. (i haven't yet read "fighting for ourselves.")

the purpose of such organizations is to try to influence the members in the broader class struggle movement to reject dangerous ideas (reformism, proto-state vanguardism / leninism, etc.) and to embrace the ideas that will help us win the revolution and create an anarchist (aka libcom, libsoc, whatever you wanna call it) society.

this is the goal, and it is pursued though things like organizing educationals for the union/solnet members, producing and distributing propaganda amongst them, putting ideas forward in meetings, and also importantly but often overlooked is connecting with fellow members and having friendly, informal chats in which political ideas are discussed. it's more effective to pursue these tasks as an organized group of anarchists than as unorganized individuals.

i know this might seem like a tangent, but it relates to the original question because the existence of these anarchist specific organizations goes hand in hand with the open membership policy for solidarity networks and syndicalist unions. although members of the solnet/union don't need to have any particular politics, the hope (and task of the specific org) is to shape their politics once they have joined, so that what is a politically open organization becomes at the same time a revolutionary anarchist organization - even as it continues to accept people of various tendencies as members.

this is a good point. it is a danger. but a specific political organization that did this would be failing at its purpose. it's fine and good to have private political discussions to develop politics, but they need to remember that their main purpose is to be spreading those politics far and wide.

Does not equal. My phone wouldn't let me do a "≠".

To push it a bit more - there's nothing stopping a proto-union working within an existing union, or organising wider struggle bodies (workplace committees, mass meetings, all the way up to workers councils), within which it's an organised revolutionary presence. This stuff, at least, wouldn't seem to require a specific organisation.

On the other hand, I don't think proto-unions are that set up to do long-term social movement work. Thing is, there aren't many long-term social movements in the English-speaking world. What I worry about, is that the axiomatic 'need' for specific political organisation, results in actively promoting SolNets, unions, social movements etc to be apolitical, because the specific political org is meant to be the source of politics. I don't subscribe to 'platform = leninism', but I do think there's an insufficient break with the format of 'political vanguard' vs 'trade union consciousness'.

Obviously, the original platform was talking about entering unions in order to 'anarchise' them. There were existing 'mass organsiations' seemingly open to anarchist ideas, and the strategy was to win them round. In the absence of such organisations (FFO argues trade unions aren't meaningfully 'mass'), the risk seems to be that first you have to create a big apolitical organisation in order for the political org to play it's alloted role.

I think the platform made a tactical assessment based on the situation at the time. I think we ought to make our own tactical judgements today. So I think there's zero chance of 'anarchising' TUC unions, though you may be able to build a branch that acts autonomously/wildcats when necessary, and link this horizontally to other branches via say, industrial networks. With SolNet's, if the goal would be to 'anarchise' them, and you're setting them up from scratch, they can be political from the start, no? That doesn't mean the kind of ideological tightness aspired too by specific orgs, but the kind of political content discussed above.

Like I say, I'm not opposed to specific political organisation in all circumstances, and there could be a complementary relationship between them and anarcho unions or SolNets (e.g. Besnard gives a historical example). But if the goal is to 'anarchise' organisations, and you're setting them up from scratch, why not build in some political content from the start? Not necessarily a worked out libertarian communist programme or anything, but certainly anarchist structures, a long term goal of social change, a narrative that links the methods to the goals etc.

hm... i do think you're raising legit concerns. we don't want solnets, etc, to be apolitical.

but we also don't want them to require members to meet specific political criteria, as i know you agree. we want membership open to a wide range of political views, or apolitical views.

with open membership, this means that as the solnet grows, its politics will drift to the reformist center...... unless there is an anarchist organization involved to actively intervene in shaping the solnets politics.

how can the drift to the center be avoided, if not for this intervention?

i do see your point that when there is an anarchist organization that is separate from the solnet, there is the risk that political discussion and growth might get centered in that anarchist organization and isolated from the solnet. but this risk can be avoided if the membership of the anarchist organization stays always conscious that its primary goal, its reason for existence, is to bring the political discussion and growth to the solnet or other 'mass organizations'.

the risk you describe only happens when an anarchist organization is wrongly perceiving its goal as merely a means of politically bettering its own membership so that they can be more effective organizers. organizations like this are missing the point of why they should exist.

so my point is that the potential risks of having an anarchist specific organization can be avoided. but i do not see how the risks of not having an anarchist specific organization can be avoided. (the risk being a drifting to the reformist center.) to me it is not even a risk, but an inevitability.

another risk of not having an anarchist specific organization is it leaves the solnets, etc. vulnerable to trotskyist hijacking.

i don't think an anarchist organization wishes and hopes for, let alone tries to create, a big apolitical solnet so that it can then later on fulfill its purpose as political guides. i think the anarchist organization is simply realistic that the solnet, or any organization with open membership, is going to - especially as it grows - have reformist and apolitical tendencies. and they know it takes organized intervention to combat this.

yes, we should aim to make solnets, and other open membership organizations, political from the start. and when they are small and cute this is much easier, and probably can be done without the help of an anarchist organization. but the hope is that these solnets grow... and as they grow, keeping them political will become harder, as the politics of its members gets diluted by the new ones. soon enough, organized anarchists are required to continue the task.

again, agreed, they should have some political content from the start. they should have anarchist structures and goals and methods from the start. but this itself is not enough to combat reformist tendencies, nor leninist tendencies, etc.

Ultraviolet and Joseph Kay both raise valid concerns. I think the answer is, try to keep our struggle organizations anarchist in the sense outlined above (not with strict ideological membership criteria, but with anarchist _content_). Try to institute anarchist political education as something that the struggle organizations themselves do (e.g. currently SeaSol has an internal-education working group which organizes educational events and distributes propaganda, much of it about revolution and anarchism, direct action etc). Try to make sure anarchist principles remain the dominant principles within the organizations. As long as this remains feasible, we don't need to formally set up separate ideological groups within the struggle organizations. BUT the moment when bad politics (whether liberal/social-democrat, leninist, nationalist, or whatever) start developing serious force within the organizations and cannot be beaten back informally, then at that point we'll probably need to set up specifically anarchist groups within the larger organizations in order to counter them. But as long as anarchists still have relative hegemony within our struggle organizations, there's no need for us to operate as a faction, and in fact it might be counterproductive.

ultraviolet, what experiences you draw from? you formulate your ideas about anarchist organization like if it is something that is obvious. so I wonder if the definite formulation come from theory or practice. although i do not agree with your statements, I am open-minded and would only welcome to lean more from people's practice.

i like most of this. but i don't think having a specific anarchist organization in the early stages is going to be counter-productive if approached the right way. it can be productive. but i do see how it *could* be counter-productive if the solnet organization is only slightly bigger than the anarchist organization, because the other solnet members might feel like they're being excluded from a club, and this could sour the friendliness of relations. measures would have to be taken to ensure an all around feeling of comradery and friendship.

not my experience, i admit. (in my first post on this thread i admitted my lack of experience in this.) my views are based on history (the experiences of others).

I don’t think anyone here would deny that. Proto-unions can certainly do that. But I think the disagreement we are having is over the role of anarcho-syndicalists (and libertarian communists in general), how syndicalist unions are established, and how content is established, etc. etc. And I certainly don’t disagree with the fact that circumstances have changed since the time of the Platform. I hope it doesn’t sound like I and as well ultraviolet are putting up out-of-date arguments. I think my position is based on current circumstances as well (correct me if I’m wrong).

If some of the things you say (e.g. promotion of apolitical organisations in the past) is true, then those are some mistakes we have to learn from and try to avoid. Here, I agree with ultraviolet.

It’s definitely here where I have a disagreement. We, as anarcho-syndicalists, should not be the ones to create the combative organisations we envision as taking on capitalism. We should help initiate such a project, but it should be largely self-determined by the potential membership, proletarians coming together to take up the task themselves, like Occupy (although it was a complete failure all-around) or ASSE.

We exist within the ranks of the proletariat. Right? It’s pretty obvious, we all know that already. Proletarians should be aware of their condition as proletarians. And they should be able to organise themselves appropriately (via syndicalism) to abolish that condition. I don’t know if they can do that with or without our influence. But since we are already ahead of everybody else in terms of self-awareness, it is that influence we should continue to push. It is the only thing we can do.

We should influence and encourage them to adopt any combination of our methods, tactics, organizational forms, and content as much as possible. When we are presenting these alternatives, we’re obviously presenting them as a whole package. I wouldn’t say, “go apolitical!” Part of it will be class-struggle political content. But we can’t assume we’ll see an open organisation that will have both the form and content we would like to have. At this point in time, we’ll probably see more form without the “right” content. My point, whatever content they do have is largely self-determined. Our work would be to work within these organisations to shape the content in the right direction, and work without, influencing other members of our class to adopt a similar course.

I agree, there is no chance of ‘anarchising’ the trade unions. I wouldn’t advocate that. I don’t remember if ultraviolet said that as well.

I just think this proto-union model is trying to be too much at the same time. I don’t see how the ‘political-economic organisation’ can remain the way it is supposed to be. Does establishing the right content from the beginning help any more than removing the ideological identification requirement? Would such content requirements actually shape and control the way the membership is supposed to act? The ASSE seemed quite militant for a while. They had an anarchist(ic?) form of organisation. They sounded quite anti-capitalist. But that didn’t stop one of their executives collaborating with the state, without much caring from anybody else.

Under today’s circumstances, I think there’s a much bigger need for an anarcho-syndicalist political organisation. Just two quick points;

First, I live in the United States. While people here are certainly not apolitical, they are politically illiterate. And I hope that doesn’t come off as a bit harsh.

Second, that doesn’t mean they will not act. They have acted and will continue to act. But the way people act and organise themselves won’t necessarily be right immediately or will automatically develop in the right direction. (I remember someone here saying that action precedes consciousness. Well, it works vice versa as well.) We have been witnessing a lot of unreflective organizing taking place that is just quite embarrassing to even contemplate. To be going about raising spirit fingers for more than a decade is just quite baffling.

i mean, i think this is a controversial point. (i'm not referring to the morality of whether or not it is authoritarian to try and push things in a certain direction.)

mainly i think its not guaranteed that the anarchist organisation is going to be making the right calls, because a political organisation doesn't necessarily group the best members / most useful organisers in wider struggle or struggle organisation. for instance an anarchist organisation might possess members largely peripheral to the most useful organising work, see something occur and use abstract judgement uninvolved in the details of the organising, to analyse it as reformist and approach attempting to shut it down through intervention in the organisation. it can lead to a situation where nothing ever happens, because only one strategy (that approved by the anarchist organisation) is pursued by the struggle organisation, and anything attempting a different tactical approach will get shut down. if the strategy proposed by the anarchist organisation is incorrect, then the wider organisation or struggle will be doomed.

i think the correct way for a political organisation to assert influence in a wider organisation is not so much strategic organised intervention, but rather to group together the best active people and use soft influence through that. for instance, then those people active in the most useful successful organising work of the organisation can legitimately exercise influence over a campaign or organising drive, if they have been instrumental in developing success and that their practices are practices that work. if an anarchist organisation does not possess the best active people in a wider organisation, then it ought to think twice before shutting something down that it calls reformist (there are limits to this obviously). the most important thing is to allow an organic method of testing for what works and doesn't work, allow something to develop naturally, and then (if necessary) start to gently push for development toward libertarian methods, with the anarchist organisation's tactical calls determined by the judgements of the most active organisers, which if the organisation is correctly inserted, will be its members. if they don't possess the most active people producing success in the wider organisation, then they need to take a step back and let others take the lead. if this lead is reformist, then it is a case of trying to develop and test functional alternatives that can compete with reformism whilst still producing results.

otherwise it is a case where the wrong kind of anti-reformism is proposed, an anti-reformism that causes things to die. the right kind of anti-reformism is one based on theoretical-practical experimentation that can develop a reformist project into something even more successful, but libertarian or syndicalist.

i think this is demonstrable in the IWW US, where the organiser training has (to my UK knowledge) proved to be a way to develop a working functional alternative to signing up shops to no-strike clauses.

an example of the bad aspect of what i am talking about is this in the cnt, although obviously it is just one members perspective and not necessarily the only way of looking at internal relations in cnt
http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-anthropology-andalucia-analysis-cnt-%E2%80%98new-capitalism%E2%80%99

sounds to me like you're saying that members of anarchist organizations have to keep a check on their arrogance. simply having anarchist politics, your judgment about what should be done in a given situation might be total shit if you don't actually understand the complexities of the situation through your personal involvement. i'd be a fool not to agree with that.

I think the question is not really phrased sharply enough. The problem is that any labor or workers organization has a politics. Any struggle organization has a politics. But the politics of a mass organization are likely to be stated in a simpler or fuzzier way than some revolutionary ideological organization, not just because of the desire to accommodate various differences among the people who formed it, are part of it, but because it must be understandable to the people it wants as members. So it's not going to be focused in the same way as some ideological group.

And of course you have various unions and NGOs whose politics is some variation on liberal, Democratic Party oriented politics here in the USA. A union that focuses on control by the paid officials has a kind of politics...a kind of politics we disagree with.

I can appreciate Joseph Kay's concerns, about ideological groups tending to draw off political discussion to their group, their circle, and this undermining the political development of the mass organization. This is in fact the way Leninist groups in USA work in my experience.

But I don't think it has to work that way. You could have an ideological group whose focus is on just the opposite, the political development of the mass organization itself, that is, making sure it has trainings of members, trying to encourage a more deep seated form of training (such as looking at the oppressive/exploitative character of the capitalist political economy), or trying to ensure the organization works through direct member mobilization and action, not things like overly relying on lobbying, etc. You might have an ideological group that is formed as an organizing group to organize a mass organization of this kind.

I sort of see the WSA's dual organizational anarcho-syndicalism this way, as being about the character of the mass organizing/organization.

But I think that in any mass organization that develops sufficient success & numbers, you are likely to have some variation in political perspective. Just in my brief visit with SeaSol members I noticed some variation in political perspective. I think this is sort of inevitable in an actual struggle organization that is working.

So you could have some mass organization where anarchists or libertarian communists have been involved in building it, but where at some point you get people belonging to other viewpoints who participate, maybe Green Party types or ISOers or Freedrom Road or even just differences that occur among left-libertarian inclined people. So then you will have to deal with that, meaning the internal discussions & debates that can take place.

So you organize a solnet to mobilize people to fight against employers & landlords. And so you want to attract anyone is willing to engage in this struggle, and so you are likely to eventually find that people of various viewpoints will become involved if it is successful.