Issue #65, January 2004

Interview with Todd Chretien, Northern California Organizer for the International Socialist Organization (ISO) on 15 November 2003 in San Francisco, CA.

BS: Where does the ISO fit on the landscape of the contemporary US Left?

TC: The ISO is, obviously, a socialist organization and our basic belief is that the concentration of wealth in this country is so extreme that the people who own and control that power will not give it up without a tremendous revolutionary process.

We see the importance of a socialist organization in beginning to put out the argument that while we should fight for whatever reforms we can win — be it defending abortion rights, or strengthening the unions, or winning voting rights for undocumented immigrants, or working alongside the Greens to get independent candidates elected — whatever the reforms are, we believe that the point of a socialist organization is to say in the long term we need to build a revolutionary movement in this country that says reforms under this system, if you leave it intact — and if you leave their power intact — they will eventually take away whatever reforms they gave you.

For instance, in the thirties we built this tremendously powerful union movement. After WWII, unions represented 35% of the American workforce — now it's 12%. We had abortion rights and although abortion under Roe v. Wade was never adequately funded federally, it was at least the law of the land — and now that is being chipped away. And you can go on and on and on in terms of the reforms that have been won: if you leave the system intact, it takes those reforms back.

BS: How do you view the shift that seems to have been taking place from an older model of parties or formal organizations to more loosely organized networks and independent activists without any connection to organizations or parties?

TC: I would just offer a brief historical explanation. Engels actually said that the mark of the American working class was that it was tremendously combative, but political organization always lags way behind. So, if you look at the most developed countries in the world, there is some type of labor party, or social-democratic party, or some type of party of the working class. Whereas, in the United States, the ruling class has always been able to prevent that organized political expression through repression and through co-optation of the Democratic Party.

In the 20th century, you had, on the one hand, the organization of a mass Communist Party and that organization was instrumental in building the unions that we have the remnants of today. Without the Communist Party there would not have been trade unions in this country, practically speaking. After WWII, two things come together to destroy that continuity of working class rebellion and its culmination in the political organization of the Communist Party in the thirties.

One is McCarthyism — McCarthyism was about destroying the Communist Party. People mostly hear about it in terms of directors and professors who lost their jobs, writers who were blacklisted, and that was certainly important. But the most important function of McCarthyism was destroying the Left and the labor unions. The labor unions that were led by Communists were expelled from the CIO, you had to sign an oath that said that you were not a member of the Communist Party. And they succeeded in destroying the political expression of the working class in terms of the Communist Party through repression.

There was also another problem, which was that the Communist Party came to identify its struggle almost uncritically with Stalin's Russia — and that meant that they replaced the struggle for socialism in the United States with the defense of what they believed to be socialism in Russia. So, they did anything Stalin said. They had first opposed Roosevelt in the early thirties and then when Stalin said, "I want to make a deal with Roosevelt to fight Hitler," they made a deal with Roosevelt to join the Democratic Party. Then, when Hitler made a deal with Stalin, then the Communist Party said, "We hate Roosevelt again." Then, when the Nazis invaded Russia, Stalin said, "We like Roosevelt again," and the Communist Party since that time basically has aligned itself with the Democratic Party. That really destroyed their authenticity as a political expression of workers' radicalism and working class emancipation.

With the collapse of Stalinism in the early nineties, not only did it destroy that model of society, it also discredited — hopefully forever — that model of Stalinist organization. That's good, on the one hand — but it left nothing in its place.

In the nineties, there has been an attempt to organize something new — the idea of loose networks as opposed to a party. That came together in Seattle and became very popular for a few years. On the one hand, we said about that development, "Excellent! That's certainly better than nothing!" We would much rather have people organizing through consensus models and getting out in the streets and fighting back than not doing anything. And we were very involved in the global justice protests.

We saw that model as a step forward, but we also believe that it has limitations. We believe that we need an organization of people who are committed to the end-goal of socialism. And we believe that you have to group those people together who are committed to that end-goal in an organization that can act together, because the forces against that end-goal are so great. You have to come together and try to coordinate yourselves in more than simply a loose-knit way.

Our model of organization, we believe, is very internally-democratic. We argue everything out, vote on things — but then when we decide to do something, we try to coordinate our activities to do it all together. We believe that this is actually more democratic than many of the so-called looser-knit consensus models. Sometimes I've been in consensus meetings where they are fairly democratic and there is actually a good process. Most times I've been in consensus meetings where the people who are willing to stay the longest get to make the decisions and the people who are the most confident get to make the decisions.

BS: Where does the US Left need to go next? One big organization? A network of organizations?

TC: Well, this is one of those questions . . . where does it need to go and where can it go? The unions need to fight — and this is happening in Southern California with the grocery workers' strike and the mechanics' strike. We think that one of the most important developments is the reintroduction into the unions of the idea of class struggle: if you don't fight, they will just keep taking things away from you.

I think the way it is going to happen this time is not one big explosion, but a series of disconnected attempts to reintroduce radical unionism in different places. It has to develop its own rhythm; its own culture.

If you present that model to the other areas of the United States now, it's the same. Students who are taking absolutely massive budget cuts in California have to shut down their universities, sit in at the campus administrations, and say, "We will not pay for tax breaks for the rich!" Because that's what this really is. You're increasing student tuition and where does that money go? It goes to the pockets of the rich.

Those are broad developments. In terms of the organized Left, we think there are a few very important things coming up. One is the 2004 elections — and there is going to be unprecedented vilification of the Green Party and Ralph Nader. The argument is going to be: Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election and that's why we have George Bush and that's why we're in fascism.

Obviously, we can understand why people hate George Bush — we hate George Bush and we definitely want to see him out. But the point of building mass movements cannot be to replace Republicans with Democrats. Because all of history shows that if that is the point of your movement, once you replace a Republican with a Democrat, they will use their influence to co-opt your movement, take it off the streets, and then hand power back to the Republicans. And twenty years from now or thirty years from now, we will be doing the same thing — except that they might have destroyed the world in a nuclear holocaust or we might not be able to breathe the air anymore.

We think that now, after Ralph Nader's good showing in 2000, he's not going to get three million votes if he runs — it's going to be harder, because the Democrats are going to go crazy saying, "How dare you vote for what you want! You must submit to the Democratic Party's nominee, whoever that is!" That will be a tremendously important battle over the next year and we are going to do everything we can to say, "Now is not the time to submit. Now is the time to stand up."

It's not going to be easy. They have a lot of power and a lot of money and we don't have a lot of power and a lot of money. But we think that the movement — the working class, poor people, students — are going to have a chance in the next generation to actually make their voices heard and to be engaged in a real fight for power in this country. And that's what we're trying to help to do.

Other interviews by J.C. Myers in this issue:

• Interview with Arnold Becchetti, National Committee Member and Former Organizational Secretary for the Communist Party USA
• Interview with David Brown, Green Party County Council Member

J.C. Myers is a member of the Bad Subjects Production Team.