Hello Cosmo comrades, I recently read Tommy Joad’s critique of Donald Parkinson’s recent article and I not only profoundly disagreed with nearly its entirety but felt it was very unfair to the point that I was motivated to personally write a response to it. I hope to hear responses and feedback from you and from Tommy Joad themself:
1. The difference however is that this deliberation did not take place in a DSA bureaucracy, there were elected delegates who were elected by the membership as a whole. The fact that there is a lack of debate is because of COVID restrictions, though this is not an excuse it is however worth noting as this is not a practice DSA intentionally set out to engage in and it will not continue when in-person meetings the size of the DSA conventions can take place in person.
2. I believe you are mistaking not understanding the meaning of certain terms for class-independence being meaningless. A class independent workers party means adopting a platform that demarcates the DSA from its present bourgeois stand, often vacillating on important issues and tailing the Democrats on others. It means adopting an unambiguously proletarian programme. As far as real party of the working class, are you prepared to argue that they already are one? I’m not sure how you could misinterpret the unobjectionable assertion that DSA is not a proletarian party and to turn it into one requires a Marxist programme that elected officials and the entire membership are required to accept to continue being elected representatives and members of DSA.
3. Yes, we clearly do, since you have decided what to think before even entering this debate. It is working with the democratic party because the mass membership has chosen it, just like they can choose to stop doing so. An appendage implies the democratic party is the brain controlling it. There is no bureaucracy or anti-majoritarian rules in the DSA that would stop the DSA from becoming Marxist like in Nevada where socialists won a majority in the Nevada democratic party and the bureaucracy aligned with Harry Reid up and left, taking the funds and organizers with them.
4. Once again you are interpreting an anecdote of one convention to represent the org in its totality. There is no proof that I am aware of that the national political committee has secret talks with any leaders of the democratic party. I have no idea what you even mean by “the Menshevik party”, they were a faction of the RSDLP alongside the bolsheviks until 1912 and you specifically mention “early 1900s”.
5. Yes and this is why breaking with the Democrats will be so easy. She will be given a choice between the DSA programme and the democrats and I think anyone with a brain in their skull knows what she would choose. We will not announce one day that we hate the democrats, the representatives that choose the DSA will be deprived of any independence they had in the legislature and if they choose the democratic party will be depriving them of our endorsement and our organizing ability. The trash will take itself out.
7. see #1 & 4 once again since this is the third time you have evoked this strawman
8. For one, the MUS is allegedly becoming a caucus as it has been eluded to by several members recently, so I believe your objection may be solved then. Furthermore, I do not believe beyond anti-Stalinism and revolutionary defeatism that one must be required to have a view on these states or these wars. We can agree that the US losing a war would be better than it winning but frankly does it matter if a member of the Marxist unity slate thinks we should support Venezuela or merely oppose US intervention? What practical significance does it have that would necessitate locking out potential members? It’s nothing but sectarianism characteristic of Trotskyites such as yourself.
9. The obvious answer is there is no top-down bureaucracy like that of the CPRF, you have created a myth based on an anecdote that limited debate was allowed due to members trying to avoid catching a serious illness that could kill them. Could more debate have happened online? Yes, will we be dealing with a pandemic every DSA convention for the foreseeable future? Probably not! Orthodox Marxists are critical of Official Communists and Trotskyites because they use bureaucratic-centralism to suppress minorities and keep them from becoming majorities. DSA has never done so since it has become the organization it is today with the beginning of the Sanders campaign.
10. I don’t think a single person in MUS would disagree with you but there is simply no basis for an international party as we speak. Even if you beat every Trot sect leader with a sledgehammer until you got them to amalgamate all their various internationals, you still would not have a mass international party. MUS has international concerns and they do speak with groups like the Dutch Communist platform and the British CPGB (PCC), but they do not pretend to be something they are not.
A few words about Marxist Unity Slate:
For 1 & 2 please view #1 at the beginning of this article, you have rehashed this same argument approximately four times now so I see no reason to answer again.
3. It’s funny you mention State and Revolution because this is perfectly in line with it. S&R states that the state is “special bodies of armed men”, this mission statement wants to smash the standing army and the national security state, what is it that you think these are? they are the state, there is no “United States of America” without the army, police, FBI, CIA, etc.
4. It does not follow from that at all actually! it is exactly because of their opposition to Millerandism that they say this. MUS is not opposed to taking ministerial positions, they are interested in an overwhelming majority that would allow the communists to come to power and attempt to create proletarian dictatorship. This is what happened more or less in Hungary and Finland and in both cases, it resulted in civil war, no one here is under any illusions that we could take positions in government and peacefully implement a workers republic. However, it is much easier to win an election by a landslide and have a fascist rebellion begin or have the bourgeoisie rig the election results so that a party can then say “we tried peace and the exploiters chose war” than to begin insurrection because we feel its simply the right time.
5. It did not turn out to be false, the DSA programme adopted does *resemble* a Marxist programme. Furthermore, who is it you think are the DSA bureaucrats? oOe of the MUS members was one of the people that helped write the programme for gods sake, stop cosplaying as a Trotsky to the DSA’s Stalin. There is no shadowy behind-the-scenes bureaucracy stopping our every move. The programme was not Marxist because the majority of DSA is not, and it is our job to change that instead of throwing our hands up and saying “well we should start an international with a dozen people in it”, which is clearly a very anti-bureaucratic option for someone constantly complaining about bureaucracy
6. While I believe Donald could’ve provided evidence, did you consider… simply using wikipedia? this is on Bebel’s wikipedia page, it literally says in the clearest terms possible:
“In 1870 he spoke in parliament against the continuance of the war with France.[1] Bebel and Liebknecht were the only members who did not vote the extraordinary subsidy required for the war with France.[2] Bebel was one of only two socialists elected to the Reichstag in 1871, and he used his position to protest against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and to express his full sympathy with the Paris Commune. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck afterwards said that this speech of Bebel’s was a “ray of light” showing him that socialism was an enemy to be fought against and crushed.[7] Falsely accused of being in league with the French and part of a conspiracy to free French prisoners of war held in Germany and to lead them in an attack from the rear, Bebel and Liebknecht were arrested for high treason, but no prosecution was possible for lack of evidence.[2]
Not wanting to release such important opponents of the war effort, old charges of preaching dangerous doctrines and plotting against the state were levied against Bebel and Liebknecht in 1872.[2] The pair were convicted and sentenced to two years in Festungshaft [de] (imprisonment in a fortress), which was spent at the famous Königstein Fortress. For insulting the German emperor, Bebel was additionally sentenced to nine months’ ordinary imprisonment.[7] This incarceration served to increase Bebel’s prestige among his party associates and the sympathetic public at large.”
This was not in some ancient archive, all you had to do was take a break from writing your rambling and pedantic polemic to type in “August Bebel Franco-Prussian war” and you would’ve gotten all the evidence you needed!
Conclusion:
Far from useful feedback, it was the opposite in my personal opinion. It provided no alternative revolutionary strategy beyond starting an international party (With what membership? The 1919 communist international, a nigh useless organization at the time, had probably 5 or even 10x more members than MUS does). Rather than doing a deep dive into the history of the DSA you instead incorrectly assumed that there is no debate in DSA because of one anecdote that does not represent the organization as a whole. You accused them of Millerandism after reading a passage whose sole purpose was to oppose Millerandism. If you would like to provide useful feedback id be very interested in hearing how you would propose:
– MUS acquire the membership to start an international party
– we create a mass party that is not DSA
– we get from a mass party to proletarian dictatorship
– we structure said dictatorship so that it does not immediately degenerate into Stalinism
– and so much more that I’m sure you could think of ,as you seem like a smart person.
With Communist Greetings,
Annie S
