Four Years On

A little over four years ago, I made a decision that dramatically changed my life. At the time, I had considered myself a socialist for a few years already, but wasn't really involved. I had decided that I wanted to join a group during the 2004 elections, and was reading up on various parties and organisations that I thought I might be interested in. The parties running candidates had a particular draw for me, though I had more or less ruled out Workers World and the SWP for political reasons. That left the Green Party (not socialist, but I was considering it anyway), the Socialist Equality Party, and the Socialist Party USA. I found a Green Party group in my home county and worked with them for a little while, but in April of 2005, I decided to actually join the Socialist Party and do my best to get involved.

In retrospect, I think I got really lucky. In the four years since I've joined the SP, I felt I've really grown, both politically and as a person in general. Part of it is just the social aspect; I've met so many interesting and friendly people because of my involvement with the SP (and the socialist movement in general.) But being connected to layers of activists and long-time socialists has been extremely helpful in developing my own politics, and absorbing ideas and organising strategies. While I still have a long way to go as an organiser, I feel I've been able to learn and apply things from my experiences with the SP, and hope to continue learning and organising into the future.

At this point in history, I think it's more important than ever for all socialists to be organised and involved. If you're looking for an organisation to join, the Socialist Party ranks very highly on my list. Maybe you should check us out!

Peter Moody For Madison Borough Council

After some deliberation, I have decided to run for borough council in my hometown of Madison, NJ. While the electoral system is certainly rigged against any sort of political action outside that of the twin parties of capitalism and war, election campaigns are still one of the best ways for socialists to get out their message of a new society based on human need, full democracy, and workers power. In addition, it gives socialists a chance to explain how individual policies and programmes, while not fully socialist in themselves, can help strengthen the hand of the working class and help give it another voice and weapon in its struggle against capitalism.

To be fair, my town is not exactly a hotbed of class struggle. As a small suburban community of 16,000 people, most of whom either work in small businesses in the town or commute to New York City to work, it will no doubt be harder to connect with residents on the need for a radical voice on the borough council, but even in Madison there are concerns about over-development, a tax burden based wholly on regressive property taxes, and issues of democracy which socialist representation on the council can help remedy, and subsequently provide other small communities with a way forward to contribute in their own way for the fight for a socialist future.

Fortunately, unlike many municipal elections around the US, New Jersey law allows me to run on a socialist banner, as opposed to "independent" or "nonpartisan," so even people who don't hear about my campaign before the election will be able to know that I stand on an anti-capitalist platform just by looking at the ballot. As a member of and candidate of the Socialist Party USA, I support and run on their full platform. However, I'm working on some particular, more in-depth planks to address issues and make changes geared specifically for Madison, which I will post here, along with a campaign website, sometime in the near future.

Finally, for any Madison, New Jersey residents that read this, I need 100 signatures by the end of May in order to appear on the ballot in November, so please get in contact with me so that you can sign my petition. Every signature will help put a genuine alternative on the ballot for Madison in 2008.

Vote Socialist in 2008!

Edit 19 April: I've created a new blog specifically for my election campaign, which will serve as the campaign website for the time being.

Some 2007 Election Results

Since someone mentioned the Labor Party in a comment, I thought I'd try to write something about that organisation, their electoral ambitions in South Carolina, and socialist perspectives on them. That's still in the works, but in the meantime I thought I'd share some socialist electoral results from the November 6 election.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was most interested in Matt Geary's campaign for At-Large Boston City Council, since it seemed like one of the most well-rounded socialist campaigns this cycle (odd numbered years always being a bit low on socialist participation). Out of nine candidates running for four at-large seats in an officially non-partisan election, Matt came in 7th with 3,025 votes (about 2.4%). Not a bad run for Socialist Alternative's first candidate.

The Socialist Workers Party has a tradition of standing the most candidates for elections (which makes this the only real time you see or hear from them, except when they're selling books at demonstrations), and they seem to have held up this tradition this year as well. SWP election results I've found are as follows: in Des Moines Iowa, mayoral candidate Diana Newberry came in second out of two with around 20% of the vote (don't know about the count.) In Houston Texas, mayoral candidate Amanda Ullman came in second out of three with around 7.% of the vote (again, don't have the vote count.) In Massachusetts, William Estrada ran for At Large Boston City Council (same race as Matt Geary) and came in 8th out of nine with 2,432 votes (1.94%.) In New Jersey, 29th District State Senate candidate Sara Lobman came in 6th out of 6 with 95 votes (0.5%), and 29th District State Assembly candidate came in 8th out of 10 (with the top two vote-getters being elected) with 233 votes (0.8%.) Except for the New Jersey races, all of these elections were officially non-partisan.

Finally, a race that I did not know about when I made my previous 2007 elections post. Silver Persinger ran for 9th District Virginia State Senate as an independent, though he joined the Socialist Party USA earlier this year. He came in 2nd out of 2 with 3,787 votes (18.3%.)

Now that that's over with, on to 2008, right? Probably, and since it's a presidential election year, I expect several socialist parties to run candidates on some level. So far, the Socialist Party has nominated its presidential ticket, Brian Moore and Stewart Alexander, and two SP-USA members have declared intent to run for congress in their districts. Hopefully these people will be joined by others who are interested in providing a radical, socialist alternative at the polls.

Leninism Against Leninists, Trotskyism Against Trotskyists (Democracy Against democrats?)

or, Why I Choose to Work in “Centrist” Organisations

A couple weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to a few socialist listservs I'm a member of as an attempt to explain my opinions on possibilities for regroupment. I got some positive responses from a couple people (which I should respond to), so at least my post got some people thinking, which is what I intended.

There was, however, one response I received from a resident orthodox Trotskyist on the e-mail list. In his response, the writer expressed concern over my apparent willingness to work with “centrist” organisations instead of working with any of the more explicitly revolutionary socialist groups that exist in the US. He also delivered some criticism of what I mentioned as some individual organisations' strengths, such as Solidarity's union work, the Socialist Party's running of candidates, and the Scottish Socialist Party's open platform policy (which, despite some re-working that will probably need to be done after the Tommy Sheridan fiasco, still is a great idea in my opinion.) Now, I thought the writer made some good points about how even if an organisation tends to focus more on a particular issue than others, that doesn't necessarily make its position on said issue a good one. I will concede that point. And I do understand the writer's argument of how nearly all of the groups I mentioned are in some way “centrist,” but I feel the need to defend and explain why I am in centrist organisations, and why I think working within such groups is, at the moment, actually better than joining a “r-r-revolutionary” (for lack of a better term) organisation.

Now, in the Marxist/Trotskyist parlance, calling a party or organisation “centrist” implies that they tend to waver between revolutionary and reformist positions. Historically, organisations that have been called centrist were groups like the Independent Labour Party in 1930s-1950s Great Britain, which, while did not put off the idea of socialist revolution merely for “holiday speeches,” nevertheless acted in a reformist manner in the meantime. The writer also mentioned that lack of democratic structure and discipline within organisations also made them centrist. Given this definition, it actually makes some sense to consider the organisations I mentioned centrist. Within the Socialist Party (the organisation I work with the most) there is a definite split between revolutionary socialists and reformists/social democrats. There are also problems with our internal structure; in my opinion there's a lack of accountability between the locals and the national office, going both up and down the line. Part of this problem is the SP's apparent phobia of anything having remotely to do with “Leninism” or “democratic centralism.” In some sense, this is definitely an understandable fear, given the track record of many organisations that have claimed to use “democratic centralist” principles, and, if my history is correct, the fact that the Spartacist League has tried to take over the Socialist Party at least once (definitely in the 1970s, and perhaps once in the 1990s as well.)

However, it is important to note that, for democracy to actually be an effective form of organisation, some degree of centralism is inherently necessary. It is absolutely essential to arrive at decisions through the most open and democratic means possible, but once those decisions are reached, there needs to be a commitment by members to do their best to carry out those decisions, even if they may not have agreed with the decision. In the realm of electoral politics, candidates running under the banner of a particular party should be held to upholding the platform and principles of that party, as they are a public representative for that party in the campaign, and in the halls of government, assuming they get elected (a rather small chance in the US, but you never know.) In any event, this combination of internal democracy and outward unity is essential for an organisation to build itself and become a power political force. As fellow blogger Korakious wrote: “democracy has no meaning without a degree of centralism; democracy - binding decisions = discussion. The minority should accept the sovereignty of the majority, without this meaning that the minority should be disrespected and/or marginalized.” In other words, it's best to operate on a system of “majority rule, minority rights,” so that the minority is not expelled or compelled to split from the organisation just because of its minority views. I would add on to this the idea that, after a period of action directed by the policy that's been voted on by the membership at whatever appropriate level, there should also be a time of reflection and analysis of how well the policies or tactics worked in that situation, so that if a similar situation comes around again, the party will be able to draw on experience to put forth a more effective policy.

But I've digressed a bit. The point is, I don't consider the Socialist Party to completely have the fully democratic structure that is should to optimally function. There's disconnect between the locals/members-at-large and the leadership, and far too many members-at-large that aren't represented by a local, regional, or state organisation. While the SP does a decently good job of not straying into the extreme centralism that some organisations can, I repeat that the lack of accountability both up and down the organisational ladder does harm to internal party democracy by failing to be adequately centralist and decentralist at the same time. Interesting trick that is, no?

Anyway, another revolutionary socialist may then ask me, “since the Socialist Party isn't the revolutionary socialist organisation you want it to be, then why have you remained there? Why don't you join an organisation that upholds the the same principles as you do?” I indeed have gotten this question before, once from a member of the ISO, and at least once from a member of the Spartacist League (for some reason, I run into Sparts more than I run into ISO folks... not sure why.) It's a good question, and unfortunately I never really thought through my reasoning until relatively recently, leaving me somewhat defenceless when it came to this question in the past. Hopefully this will help me answer that question with better certainty in the future. The primary reason why I haven't switched my membership to a “more revolutionary” organisation that the SP-USA (or Solidarity, which I am also a member of) is simply because not many of those organisations have good track records when it comes to upholding true democratic centralist principles either.

For example, let's look at the history of the Spartacist League. Now, despite the reputation they've earned in the 40 years since their formation, the minority tendency in the SWP that they were formed from had some interesting criticisms of the SWP, especially regarding the Civil Rights movement. Early on, the Spartacist League also did some decent union work, and were able to recruit gay activists and former students. However, somewhere along the line, it looks like something went horribly wrong. It might have been the first split that the SL suffered, when in 1971 a number of founding Spartacists left to form Spark, and affiliated themselves with Lutte Ouvrière in France. Because of this split, only one leader of the tendency which founded SL remained central in the organisation: James Robertson. It might have just been the pressure that was placed on all socialist groups during the 1970s, and the Spartacist League just wasn't able to cope. Whatever the reason, the SL now has the dubious honour of being one of the most sectarian, obnoxious, sometimes violent, and overall just annoying organisations on the socialist Left.

At least, that's how the organisation appears to people on the outside. On the inside, however, things could be quite different. For all we know, the Spartacist League may have one of the most rigorously democratic internal regimes of all the socialist organisations that exist in the US. That's one of the problems with organisations that operate on a very strict cadre manner (as if Lenin suddenly stopped writing about party organisation after 1902), people on the outside have almost no way of looking into the organisation first, to see if it actually meets their structural as well as political expectations. Even if the internal regime of the Spartacist League is this paragon of true democratic centralism, we on the outside cannot become aware of it.

Still, despite this possibility that the Spartacist League could have a highly democratic and open internal regime, I have severe doubts as to whether or not this is actually the case. My scepticism draws from the fact that, in the 40+ year existence of the Spartacist League, they managed to have practically one split a decade. Aside from the already-mentioned split that formed Spark in 1971, the Revolutionary Workers League was formed out of SL in 1976, and the Bolshevik Tendency split from the Sparts in 1982. Most recently, the Internationalist Group was spawned from the Spartacist League in 1996. Each of these groups split/were expelled/whatever from the Spartacist League for different reasons, but the fact that so many groups were ejected from the Sparts seems to indicate a lack of internal democracy resulting in insufficient political expression for the minority faction. At the same time, the situation could also be explained by the minority wanting special concessions from the majority, also something which is anti-democratic. My guess is some combination of both. Either way, this indicates a lack of respect for democracy on at least one side of the split.

Another, less blatant example might be the International Socialist Organization. The ISO, for better or for worse, is probably the largest organisation in the US that upholds some variant of Trotskyism, and indeed one of the larger socialist organisations in the US. It's probably one of the most represented organisation among the student Left, along with SDS and YDS. Now, as far as I know there has never been a major split in the ISO, except when they were expelled from the International Socialist Tendency, and a small group called Left Turn kept the IST franchise (they've since left the IST as well.) However, the ISO is considered to have a relatively high rate of "member turnover," meaning that people join up for a year or two or three, then leave the organisation. Many organisations use this as an example of the ISO's undemocratic internal practises driving away members. I don't fully buy this argument, as it could be since the ISO is fairly prominent on college campuses, this high membership turnover could be due to college students becoming radicalised for a couple years, then dropping out after they graduate. Still, there is most likely some element of truth in the claim that high membership turnover is a result of an undemocratic internal regime, especially if the ISO has kept much of its organisational norms that it inherited from the British Socialist Workers Party.

So, there are a couple of examples of how revolutionary organisations probably don't live up to the standards of revolutionary democracy either. And, given the choice between an "inconsistently revolutionary" organisation with an open democratic structure such as the Socialist Party, or a more explicitly revolutionary organisation with an unclear democratic/un-democratic structure like the Spartacist League or, to a lesser degree, the ISO, I'd readily choose the former, on the argument that it will be an easier and more productive struggle to change the former groups towards revolutionary politics than change the latter to a more open, democratic structure.

Voting Socialist in 2007/2008

Now that it's early August, a good number of socialists have declared candidacies and begun campaigning. While I'm sure there are socialist that I have either failed to get information on, or haven't declared yet, as of now it looks like three socialist parties are putting up candidates around the country this year.

As of now, the best candidate I can find is standing in the Boston city council election, as an at-large candidate. Matt Geary, of Socialist Alternative, is as far as I know the first Soc. Alt. member running as a political candidate outside of the Green Party. His campaign site gives a good listing of platforms and demands, and he gives good focus on youth and students (being only 22 himself.) The only hitch is that since the Boston city council election is non-partisan, Matt will not be listed as a socialist on the ballot, nevertheless Matt does not seem to hide his politics, like some erstwhile socialists do when seeking office in the US. In addition to Socialist Alternative, Matt's campaign has been endorsed by the Boston local of the Socialist Party USA, and the Young People's Socialist League is also considering an endorsement.

The Socialist Workers Party is the second party fielding candidates this year. As usual, it seems, the SWP is fielding the most candidates out of any socialist organisation. While I do have many disagreements with the SWP's politics, not to mention their electoral sectarianism and the fact that they don't seem to publish their campaigns much outside their own newspaper, I do appreciate that they do run candidates. Their candidates are as follows: in Iowa, they're running Diana Newberry for mayor of Des Moines, and Seth Galinsky for at-large Des Moines city council. In Massachusetts, William Estrada is running for Boston at-large Boston city council. Hopefully you can vote for more than one candidate in that election, so that the socialist vote is not split. If not, I'd recommend voting for Matt Geary. In New Jersey, the SWP is putting up Sara Lobman for 29th District state senate and Edward Beck for 29th District state assembly as candidates. And in Pennsylvania, Ryan Scott is running for mayor of Pittsburgh, John Staggs is running for mayor of Philadelphia, and Osborne Hart is running for at-large Philadelphia city council.

The Socialist Party USA unfortunately didn't do so well this year as far as fielding candidates goes. We only had one: Tino Rozzo, running for 1st District New Jersey state senate, and he was challenged off the ballot by a Democratic state assembly candidate. Still, I believe Tino is contesting as a write-in candidate. The SP-USA is, however, thinking forward for 2008. Back in June, we set up a Presidential search committee to look for and encourage SP members (and other socialists) to think about running for president or vice-president on the Socialist Party ballot line. So far, thirteen candidates have declared interest; two of those candidates have only expressed interest in being the vice-presidential candidate, but the eleven others are open for either office. The names of the thirteen, plus contact information and answers to the questionnaire sent out to them (when it becomes available) can be found at the SP's election site: www.vote-socialist.org. In the interest of getting on the ballot in as many states as possible, the SP also hopes to get the endorsement from the Peace and Freedom Party of California, and the Liberty Union Party of Vermont. In addition, one or two people have expressed interest in running for congress on the SP ballot line (such as the person I mentioned in my previous post), so hopefully 2008 will be a better year for us in terms of candidates.

Again, this list isn't final. If I find out about more canididates, I'll post them here too, probably in a final post before the 2007 elections.

Welcome to the March! (FAQ)

What is this?

A blog.

Well, thanks, that was informative. Why have you created this blog?

It's an attempt to keep my political rants and rambles away from my Live Journal, and try and have that focused more strictly on more personal things, mostly to not bore my LJ friends to death with political stuff. Still, I have a feeling there will be some overlap. We shall see which gets posted to more. So this blog intends to be very political.

Okay, that makes some sense. But why call it "The Long March of the Penguins?"

There are a couple reasons for that. Partially, this project was inspired by a another blog I read, known as the Squirrel Vanguard (or Red Squirrel's Lair), a fine group of communist squirrels based in Scotland. They posted something a little while ago about a blog called The Red Wombat Hole, and referenced some sort of "revolutionary species international." And I'm just building on that, with an American section comprised of penguins.

Also, the title is dual reference to "March of the Penguins", a film about penguins narrated by Morgan Freeman, and "The Long March", which was a march undertaken by Mao Zedong and much of the Communist Party of China in 1934 in order to escape from the anti-communist Nationalists headed by Chiang Kai-Shek. Hence, both communism and penguins.

Ah, I see. So are you Maoists? And why penguins; they're not native to the US.

No, I am not a Maoist. Broadly defined, I consider myself a revolutionary democratic socialist and a Trotskyist (though I freely admit I'm somewhat under-read on the matter). As for other bloggers that may contribute here in the future, their particular brand of socialism cannot be narrowed down since they're not known yet! However, it's reasonable to say that they'll be revolutionary-oriented socialists (ie, probably not social democrats) interested in some sort of regroupment effort, which may include Maoists.

As for the penguins, you're right that they're not native to the US. I just like the animal, that's all.

So this blog will cover topics relating to socialism?

Well, yes. Specifically, I tend to focus on labour/union issues, elections and political work, some youth rights stuff, the Fourth International (in its various incarnations, though I'd consider myself in the orbit of what's commonly known as the USFI), the Middle East (in particular highlighting movements in opposition to both US/Western imperialism and political Islam), and leftist sectology and general sectariana.

Are you a member of any socialist organisation?

A couple, actually. I am (as of writing this) national Vice-Chair of the Young People's Socialist League, as well as a member of the Socialist Party USA, and an "official sympathiser" in Solidarity. My hope is that some time in the future, I won't need to list all these groups, as they'll have merged together (with YPSL coming more into its own as a proper party youth section.)

That's really it to start out, so hopefully other questions will be answered as posts commence. So, enjoy the blog, and remember: