Should also add that the recent WSWS article on the fall of ISO even points to how well-placed trade union bureaucrats were in the organization, only for these elements to help end ISO. It isn't that left-wing organizations in general refuse to engage; they do engage, and this engagement itself often proves a source of problems, if it's successful at all.
Trade unions politically are not even as radical as they were thirty years ago, and the union bureaucrats have a basic low-level antagonism with the direction of any legitimate socialist organization. I'm not absolutely convinced of the SEP's position on trade unions, but their position is based on experience.
How does that make the SEP better than the IWW, you silly Trot?
Jace Cox
I’m not arguing that the problem in general with the Left today is that of refusal to engage, I’m arguing that the SEP cannot offer the alternative. The problem with those that are engaging is that they arent attempting to cause a split. Their aim is to pressure the Democrats, not to defeat the Democrats. Their “criticism” is just to justify their complete support for the liberal leadership. Refusing to engage, however, means stifling the potential of realizing that split. The problem is the tactic isnt used properly.
There isnt anything wrong with the SEP’s criticism of the collapse of the ISO. If there is anything I can praise of the WSWS, it is a modern online newspaper with a popular audience - something most “parties” dont have.
Kayden Taylor
You can't change it from inside out by slipping subtle hints in or out right being revolutionary somehow?
Trots that are having consensual relations en masse with young college girls are the opposite of incels. It is a shame to see Lenin's hat be worn by a radlib.
David Reyes
clockwork. i even like Trotsky but Trots are a scourge
Jace Carter
That pic looks like a pretty decent org tho. Also we now have Marxist Center, For the People, and a newly energized IWW, with budding New Afrikan Black Panther Party. You 20th century LARPers, every longstanding yet somehow tiny sect of Trots, MLs and anarchists, are thankfully being phased out.
Kevin Edwards
This is my favorite sentence about the ISO from that article from the Weird Sex Web Site:
David North, if you're reading this: get a fucking grip!
Jason Myers
My impression is that the ISO was one of these obsolete "press" parties. I don't literally mean the newspaper (Trot joke) but the whole way of doing things is wrapped up in a print mentality in which there's a party line and a publisher that I don't think translates into the 21st century very well as way of organizing the "core" of the party.
Like, if you're a college student, your first encounter with socialism in the U.S. would be the ISO in many places, and resources to learn about this stuff is hard to come by, but the ISO provided that and it was all ready for you. I have been to a few ISO meetings (was never a member) and they'd have Haymarket books for sale, etc. – this was at a college campus, naturally enough. There was the paper, there was Haymarket, and you'd be expected to read Tony Cliff and follow the line. But most people getting involved in the left today are doing it online and they can follow a variety of different people with different views, because it's happening on Twitter.
