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

In reply to this line from Agent of the Fifth International:

Here I don't entirely agree. Whether the combative organisations that ultimately take on the state are built mainly by anarchosyndicalists, versus being less politically defined / more multi-tendency, will depend on how many anarchosyndicalists there are when a revolutionary period comes, how strong the mass base of anarchosyndicalism is, what other tendencies are strong, etc. If there is already a mass anarchosyndicalist movement with overwhelming weight within the working class, and libertarian socialism is the dominant ideology among working class activists, then it might end up being our organizations which take on that role themselves.

We can't be sure one way or the other, but either way we need to be prepared. Even if anarchosyndicalist mass organizations do _not_ end up being the ones which take on the state, still the relative weight of our ideas and organizational force will largely determine what happens in the aftermath of the initial mass uprising - whether power is handed back to the state, captured by a new (centralized and authoritarian) state, or held by the new bottom-up popular institutions of the movement. And the only way we're likely to be able to build up our forces sufficiently _before_ periods of potentially revolutionary mass movement is by building anarchist-driven organizations which directly organize class struggle themselves, not just spread ideas and/or seek to have influence from within other non-anarchist struggle organizations. At least that's the only way it's ever been done before...

Great thread. FWIW I'm personally skeptical of any claim along the lines of 'XYZ sort of organization can only/can never do ABC thing'. I know nobody here said that but the question in the OP implies it and I think some people do sometimes say that (unions committed to radical ideology must fail, reformist unions can never produce anything worthwhile, etc). It seems to me that stuff as it plays out it usually more complicated and dynamic than that, though we can still have opinions on what's best to do and why. (I hope that makes sense and isn't just a truism, it's really late here.)

Sorry if I ought to know this Blarg, but does SeaSol have explicitly ideological membership criteria? The IWW does though I think they're minimal - people are expected to agree with the Preamble as they understand it. Here too I feel like I ought to know this but I think SolFed does, though JK has pointed out that people sometimes overstate how much they require.

I like how this is layed out. It seems to me there's at least two different ways to do the education and dominant principles thing. One is by making some stuff official and officially reproduced in the organization. Like in the IWW the Preamble is political and seems to be slapped on all kinds of stuff. Or like the organizer training, which is political in different ways, as somebody said. Then there's doing education work that there's room for but which isn't officially supported/supported by the official organization's resources. I don't think there's a single best approach between these. I do think though that there's an important difference between a group that's like "pretty much all outlooks are welcome, and some anarchists do educational stuff" and a group that actively reproduces anarchist (or for the IWW I guess I'd say anarchish?) ideas.

There's also something here about the relationship between anarchist content/principles being built into an organization's lived practices in an implicit but still real way (in ways that at least some members may be less aware of explicitly?), like maybe say recallable delegates or direct action or something, and anarchist ideas that are openly consciously discussed as the level of principle and analysis. I can't manage to fomrulate this thought clearly right now. I'll try again later.

Can you elaborate on this or point me to where I can find something on this please? IT's interesting but I'm not sure I get it.

Does ideology here mean mostly identity/tradition?

Finally, this x100:

That's succinct and well put. And from what you said before, this involves at least some space for conscious/explicit political education as well as part of the life of the organization.

This is a good discussion, but I think there's a tendency to think too much in terms of rival models that are either correct or not. The problem with models is that they neglect the conditions in which people are organising, but it's those conditions that determine the limits of what is politically possible. The other problem is that there's often an underlying assumption that there exists a perfect model that we only need to find, and suddenly we're winning the class struggle, as if by magic.

Instead of models, we should consider what general organisational strategies can achieve in particular conditions. IMO a dual organisational strategy will probably work pretty well in conditions of mass organisations of workers engaged in wide spread struggle, and it would be a necessary strategy if those organisations are not libertarian. But it does not make sense to me in the conditions I find myself in - moribund bureaucratic unions, extremely low class confidence, increasingly reactionary political climate. At the AGM of my trade union branch, 5% of the membership turned up even though we're apparently involved in a campaign against outsourcing - if someone had gotten up and argued in favour of anarchism,I can't imagine them being very successful. I think it's much more fruitful to apply an anarcho-syndicalist strategy and organise around concrete grievances according to our principles.

A second underlying assumption I'd like to criticise is when people talk about our politics/ideological principles as if they were an arbitary set of ideas, no different from any other ideology or even religion, disconnected from the reality of working class struggle. I believe our ideas are fundamentally a natural fit with working class organisations, not something alien to be grafted on organisations, or like a bitter medicine that we have to get people to swallow by some clever trick or something. Anarcho-syndicalist theory is often described as derived from the lessons learnt in past struggles, so if we take our ideas from that we're giving our organisations a head start.

No. I could see how it might be worth adding some minimal form of this (e.g. "agree to the following short list of basic principles") at some point, but it doesn't seem to be a high priority right now. We do have some vague official statements about "running the world without bosses or landlords", but we probably have some members who don't know what that means or don't fully agree with that, and we definitely have some who believe we can get there via reform within the system. But those are mostly members whose participation is limited to coming out to actions every month or two and talking on the phone with an organizer every couple of weeks, so they aren't setting the tone or direction of the group. Over time, the general trend seems to be towards making the organization more anarchist (in the sense we're talking about on this thread obviously, not in the sense of being embedded in the local anarchoid activist subculture) over time, as being bigger helps overcome fears of getting stuck as a small and marginalized group due to our politics, as well as just the issue of having enough capacity to be able to focus on anything beyond just winning our current fights.

I also think if/when we (solnets) eventually federate into some larger body, at that level the question of official political principles will become more important.