Why You Should Join the International Socialist Organization
If you agree with most of the articles here, especially the ones under the "Revolutionary Party", then you need to join the International Socialist Organization.
Isolated individuals, even with the best understanding of the system and how it works, can't and will never be able to overthrow capitalism. In order to do that, we need an organization - a revolutionary socialist organization, that is dedicated and made of people dedicated to leading a revolution to destroy capitalism and establish a society based on human need.
The reason we need an explicitly revolutionary socialist organization are many. For one, socialists are a very small minority - there is no sense in fooling ourselves on this score - and in order to maximize the influence of our ideas, we need to be organized. We need to be part of an organization that not only spreads the ideas of socialism generally, but participate in the struggles that exist in the here and now; we need to a dynamic combination of propaganda and agitation, revolutionary ideas and struggle to change things.
The activity of socialists today, in this country, has made a real difference. There are innocent people who are off of death row because of the activity and initiative of socialists; there are towns where the Klan can no longer march because we organized a campaign to keep them off our streets; there are places that have anti-war committees (like Geneseo) that otherwise wouldn't have. It is out of the small struggles of today that a layer of people are radicalizing, and can be won to socialist politics. And it is also out of the small struggles of today that we, as socialists, learn how to argue and organize, gaining valuable experience for bigger struggles down the road.
Being part of a revolutionary organization within a movement or a struggle, be it a strike, a demonstration, or an anti-war committee, is also important because politics is like nature - it abhors a vacuum. If revolutionary socialist ideas are not dominant, or if their influence is very limited, then reformist ideas, of one stripe or another, will be dominant. The ideas that guide a movement and the political organizations that strive to influence a movement, obviously have strong repurcussions for the shape that movement takes, the character of the debates, and ultimately, whether or not that movement is successful.
As Marx put it, "Ideas can never lead beyond an old world order but only beyond the ideas of the old world order. Ideas cannot carry out anything at all. In order to carry out ideas men are needed who can exert practical force."
But not only is revolutionary socialist organization necessary. It is not enough to join a group that has revolutionary socialist ideas; the ideas must guide and be part of all the actions of the organization; the organization must recruit other people based on those ideas; and the ultimate goal of the organization has to be workers' revolution - that is, smashing the state, and taking power.
The organization has to be democratic. Without democracy, it's impossible to generalize from different levels of experience, different struggles, and learn the lessons of history. I wasn't alive in 1917 when the Bolsheviks took power; I wasn't alive when the unions were organized in the 1930s; I don't live in LA, and didn't go to the Justice for Janitors demonstration; I wasn't in Seattle for the WTO protests. But the lessons from those struggles need to be learned and applied to the struggles of today. The only way one can do that and "exert practical force" derived from those lessons is to be part of a revolutionary socialist party.
There are different levels of experience within the organization - some people are union members, some people are on campuses, some are on or in neither. The only way to minimize that uneveness is to have debates and discussion about what the lessons of different struggles are, how we should relate to them, and influence them. Not only that, but in order to point a way forward for the organization itself and all the struggles it is involved in, democracy is necessary. If you know the answer, you don't need democracy; but if you don't know the answer, you need to collective discussion and debate.
Without internal democracy, the organization will not be made up of people who are ready, willing, and able to lead the working class' fight for socialism; it will be, instead, an organization of zombies incapable of thinking for themselves.
But in order to carry out the democratic decisions made by the majority, there has to be centralization, there has to be some organizational discipline. Otherwise, the decisions remain a dead letter, and everyone is free to do or not do whatever they feel like. If everyone "does whatever", we'll never overthrow the ruling class. And if we don't have a centralized organization, we'll never be able to smash a centralized state. The ruling class is organized, the state is a centralized apparatus; without a centralized organization on the side of the working class, the ruling class will be able to easily defeat any uprising, revolution, street fighting, and so on.
The Russian revolutionary Lenin understood the necessity for a revolutionary organization when he was writing about the Russian revolutionary movement in 1902 in a famous article called "Where to Begin?":
... the building of a fighting organization and the conduct of
political agitation are essential under any "drab peaceful"
circumstances, in any period, no matter how marked by a
"declining revolutionary spirit"; moreover, it is precisely in
such periods and under such circumstances that work of this
kind is particularly necessary, since it is too late to form
the organization in times of explosion and outbursts; the
party must be in a state of readiness to launch activites
within twenty-four hours. "Change the tactics within
twenty-four hours!" But in order to change tactics it is first
necessary to have tactics; without a strong organization
skilled in waging political struggle under all circumstances
and at all times, there can be no question of that sytematic
plan of action, illumined by firm principles and steadfastly
carried out, which alone is worthy of the name of tactics.
... no political party that wishes to avoid adventurous
gambles can base its activities on the anticipation of such
outbursts and complications. We must go our own way, and we
must steadfastly carry on our regular work, and the less our
reliance on the unexpected, the less the chance of our being
caught unawares by any "unexpected turns".
In fact, history shows that without a party, without an organization of revolutionary socialist militants built before revolution, before the struggle for power, the working class is doomed to defeat. In the German revolution of 1918 and 1919, the German working class spontaneously rose up in town after town, city after city, one after the other. There were workers' councils which ran these cities and towns which directed the uprisings. But they were crushed, one by one by one, by the capitalist government. They were not coordinated, and so they remained isolated - and the capitalists smashed each uprising individually. There was no revolutionary party, there was no equivalent of the Bolshevik party in Germany, to lead the revolution forward to dismantle the capitalists' government and put all power into the hands of the workers' councils. And so the working class failed to wrest power from the hands of their exploiters, and capitalism lived to see another day.
A revolutionary socialist party, made up of the most politically advanced layer of the working class, organized along the lines of democratic centralism - this is the heart of "Bolshevism" or "Leninism" - is what every workers' revolution since the Russian revolution of 1917 has lacked, and so has been defeated. In Germany in 1918-1919, in Hungary in 1919, in Italy in 1919-1920, in Spain and France in 1936, in Hungary in 1956, in Chile in 1973, in Iran in 1979, the working class took over factories, and created a situation in which they could have taken power. But none of them had a revolutionary party, and so they were all crushed - without exception - by either fascists, military dictators, or some unpleasant combination of the two.
In a revolution, either the working class takes power, or the capitalists keep it, and it becomes a counter-revolution. "Those who half make a revolution dig their own graves." This is not to say that defeat is impossible with a party, but victory is impossible without it.
So join the ISO! and help build that party today.
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