BY DICK NICHOLS
CHICAGO — Inevitably, the annual convention of the US International Socialist Organization, which took place in this freezing "windy city" between January 18 and 20, was dominated by two questions. How invulnerable is the US imperialist Goliath after its "triumph" in Afghanistan? How should the left and anti-imperialist movement regroup and counterattack?
Only the blind could deny that Washington is still riding high: the terror of September 11 has converted the ridiculous George "Dubya" Bush into a commander-in-chief with dream approval ratings; Congress has passed the draconian USAPATRIOT Act with barely a whimper of opposition; "racial profiling" of suspect criminals is supported even by black and Latino Americans; academics and liberal politicians like Jesse Jackson have been baited for "anti-American behaviour"; and the US war machine is having little trouble in preparing its next targets for high-tech slaughter.
On the left, confusion and desertion have reaped some eminent victims: apparent opponents of the system like journalist Christopher Hitchens have buckled before the wave of patriotic hysteria; Greens presidential candidate Ralph Nader has criticised the US bombing of Afghanistan but not the war as such; meetings of global justice activists have shrunk and demonstrations have been cancelled; and a younger generation of socialists have had a shock initiation in the joys of red-baiting, sometimes coming from disoriented and demoralised fellow activists.
So, is this a return to the 1950s and Cold War conformism? Emphatically not, said the perspectives document adopted by the ISO convention. While "Bush and Co. have shown that they would like nothing better than to resurrect a new McCarthyism as a domestic counterpart to their new war on terrorism... this is not the 1950s, when the post-war economic boom brought the US ruling class compliance from below."
Discussion at the convention detailed the many cracks in the imperial megalith and in a Bush administration that is showing all the classic signs of imperial overconfidence.
Underlying them all is the sullen and widespread rage of US working people, who for 25 years have seen their working conditions and wages cut back in boom and bust alike while CEO salaries have risen to 540 times average weekly earnings! US workers now face a deep recession with a "social safety net" almost completed shredded by the Clinton administration.
In this context many Americans, especially black Americans, have not forgotten that Bush's presidency is the result of electoral corruption that directly disenfranchised tens of thousands of African-American voters in Florida. One delegate told the conference of her pleasant surprise at the positive reception a branch poster (saying "he's still a crook") received from passers-by.
As for the anti-globalisation movement, it might still be in shock, but it hasn't been killed off. Indeed, this year's shift of the World Economic Forum from its home base in Davos to New York City as an expression of "solidarity" with the victims of September 11 is a blatantly provocative wake-up call to global justice activists.
Enron scandal
Most subversive of all is the Enron bankruptcy. The price of the biggest corporate collapse ever was paid by the energy trader's workers who lost nearly all their retirement savings, while Enron's executives made sure they got their money out before their accounting hoax posing as a solvent company finally vaporised.
The conservative Business Week didn't miss the political impact on ordinary Americans: "It is difficult not to contrast the professionalism of modestly paid firefighters and police doing their duty on September 11 with the secretive and squirrely behaviour of six- and seven-figure accountants, lawyers, CEOs, bankers, and financial analysts who failed at their duty with Enron... Unless the country's leaders seize the moment to clean up the mess, they risk a major populist backlash."
So while some of the left are still reeling under the blows of Bush's offensive, others are already responding. The dictatorial powers contained in the USAPATRIOT Act have already led students to stage mock INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) raids in campus classrooms, while some universities have refused to hand over the names and records of their foreign students.
The counter-mobilisation against the World Economic Forum looms as the most immediate test of the powers of recovery of the left and global justice movement, and if the movement is to recover it will have to mature.
From the delegates' interventions, it was clear that September 11 had applied a political blowtorch to the movement, exposing many illusions and misconceptions. The political perspectives document summarised the ideological havoc like this: "For a movement that believed that 'states' had become archaic in the face of mobile multinational capital, the return of the state with a vengeance — in the form of the US military — found the movement wanting."
Convention delegates groaned as they recalled debates with fellow movement activists over whether the US flag should be the emblem of the peace movement. (Others joked that the one progressive side-effect of September 11 was that it had finally induced some Southerners to replace the confederate banner with the Star and Stripes!)
'Tougher and more political'
ISO national secretary Ahmed Shawki stated that the minority who have survived the chaos were "tougher and more political" for having had to swim against the stream. The thousands who protested against the US army's "university of terror", the School of the Americas, were a good example of the anti-imperialist core around which a more mature global justice movement could be rebuilt.
The most important factor in rebuilding the movement would be the clarity and tenacity of the revolutionary socialists working within it, the convention noted. In the words of the organisational perspectives document: "The experience of the last few months has demonstrated vividly that those who stand up for what they believe in can win others to their ideas — while those who cave into the pressure themselves get lost in the confusion."
This had been reflected in the expansion pattern of the ISO itself: those branches that had been least afraid of controversy were also those that grew. At the national level the circulation of International Socialist Review, the ISO's theoretical journal, which has led the way in explaining and opposing Bush's war, had also jumped markedly.
Where to from here? The convention laid out five main areas of intervention:
- The global justice movement should look to focus its local efforts on linking up with working-class and community fightbacks. It should also fight for the idea that stronger anti-war and international solidarity movements strengthen the fight for global justice. And while not opposing direct action, it should take care — especially in the atmosphere created by the USAPATRIOT Act — to make sure that tactics adopted help the movement regain confidence and broaden its base.
- Within the anti-war movement the goal should be to create permanent structures with which to face Bush's war without end. In any lulls the stress should be on injecting an anti-imperialist perspective into debates both on campus and in the fledgling Labor for Peace and Justice movement.
- The defence of civil liberties takes on a new urgency. The ISO should be in forefront of initiatives defending academic freedom, promoting non-compliance by universities with FBI demands for records and in fighting racial profiling, witchhunts and racially motivated sackings.
- The Campaign to End the Death Penalty, to which ISO members are critical, should build on its successful founding conference by campaigning for Mumia Abu-Jamal's right to a new trial, for an extension of the present Illinois state moratorium on executions and to stop upcoming executions in Maryland.
- In the workplace and labour movement the stress should be on consolidating sales of the now weekly Socialist Worker, strengthening the role of the labour organiser in ISO branches and on holding regular meetings of members in industry.
A constant theme throughout the convention was the need to build strong branches of the ISO as a precondition for recruiting to the socialist cause and for having an effective intervention in the movements. "In many ways our degree of political influence has run ahead of our level of organisation", Shawki said, stressing that this gap had to be bridged by any means necessary.
At the end of this enthusiastic, militant and thoughtful convention it was clear to this observer that the socialist movement in the US is in the process of producing what the socialist movement the world over has sorely lacked for many decades — an effective contingent within the belly of the imperialist monster.
[Dick Nichols is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party and a national convener of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 6, 2002.
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