[In issue 156, Barry Sheppard reported on the Committees of Correspondence Founding Convention, held in Chicago, USA, on July 22-24. Here Max Elbaum, another CoC member and managing editor of the magazine CrossRoads, presents another perspective. This article is excerpted from a longer one in CrossRoads.]
The Founding Convention of the Committees of Correspondence successfully concluded a two-year process of constructing a new socialist organisation. It also signalled the end of a longer period during which organisational upheavals and "left regroupment" initiatives were a central dynamic in the US socialist movement.
The last decade's roller coaster ride has reshaped the left around the world. One of the most welcome changes is the willingness of once-warring camps to rethink traditional formulas and engage in dialogue.
Discussion aimed at hammering out a renewed socialist vision and strategy will certainly continue; hopefully it will probe even more deeply. But in the US, momentum toward further organisational realignment has at least temporarily receded. We are now at a certain resting point, as the major groups (the Committees of Correspondence is only one among several) pause to consolidate themselves and stabilise their relationships with one another.
It is therefore a good time to step back and take stock — not just of the strengths and weaknesses of the Committees, but of the changed map of the organised socialist left after the head-spinning trip we've taken together.
Tenacity
The catalyst for the international socialist movement jumping off its traditional rails was the dramatic effort at renewal — followed by explosion and collapse — in the former USSR. Ripples from the upheaval in "actually existing socialism" intersected with vastly different realities in different parts of the globe. But in almost every country, opportunities opened for socialists to end their sectarian wars and confront dramatically changed circumstances with fresh strategies and united action.
In the US, the Committees of Correspondence — launched by activists who broke away from the Communist Party in early 1992 — has been the most broad-based and sustained effort to go beyond dialogue and regroup socialists from diverse traditions into a common activist organisation. The group which has emerged from this process is a tangled mix of innovation and inertia.
The founding convention accomplished its basic goals. Hard work and extensive preparations brought 388 delegates (representing 1,500 paid-up members) and 132 observers to Chicago's Bismarck Hotel. The tenacious assembly approved a Goals and Principles document ("Toward a Democratic and Socialist Future") built around the concept of "radical democratisation of our economic and political system".
They also passed a set of by-laws mandating an elaborate national leadership structure and substantial autonomy for state and local chapters; many attendees termed the new group essentially a "federation". An "Action Program" was approved and "Committees of Correspondence" was reaffirmed (after considerable debate) as the organisation's name. The body elected an initial core of leadership which is energetic, committed, racially diverse and more representative of the different political tendencies in the membership than the outgoing body.
Commitment to democratic procedures and respect for political differences — first evident at the Committees' 1992 launching-pad conference in Berkeley — was institutionalised.
Strong internationalist sentiments were evident, and featured speakers from the South African Communist Party (SACP), Brazil Workers Party (PT) and German Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) indicated the Committees' determination to forge links with the most vital currents seeking new paths to socialist renewal around the world. (Other international guests included the editor of Australia's 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, activists involved in socialist regroupment efforts in Canada and a representative from Cuba.)
A public "Road to Freedom" rally during the convention drew close to 1000 to hear SACP general secretary Charles Nqakula, PT Senate alternate Dulce Maria Pereira, PDS electoral strategist Andre Brie and US activist and scholar Angela Davis.
In the convention's most significant breakthrough, a substantial number of younger activists barged their way into the central leadership of the Committees. A self-organised youth caucus — involving about 60 activists 30-something-and-under — demanded that the gathering empower a youth task force, fund a half-time youth organiser and add eight youth chosen by the youth themselves to the incoming National Coordinating Committee. The moment when the youth took over the microphones to assert and then win their demands was undoubtedly the most positive point in the meeting.
On the downside, the convention proceedings — plenaries especially — were far too dominated by the stale, pale and male. The racial composition of the assembly left much to be desired: only about 15% of the delegates were activists of colour, and this proportion is probably higher than in the membership as a whole.
The main convention documents — "Action Program" included — were filled with generalities that provide almost no direction for what the Committees might actually do. Except in one panel scheduled before the convention's official opening, key questions about what strategies the Committees might pursue in mass movements or what specific role it would play on the left were addressed superficially if at all.
As for pluralism, there is one type in which well-developed opposing views clash and interact, with participants learning from the exchange while agreeing to disagree. There is another where differences are fudged, discussion sinks to the lowest common denominator, and all but the most diehard head for the hallway. In contrast to the Committees' inspirational 1992 conference, plenaries at this convention were mainly examples of the latter.
The large-group exchanges on electoral strategy and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality and environmental protection were shop-worn exercises in "going through the motions". More than one incident revealed a stubborn streak of self-congratulation and complacency, of disproportionate concern with structural and bureaucratic matters rather than the quality of theoretical-political debate. There were more heated exchanges over whether this or that task force should be established than over whether socialists should work in the Democratic Party or whether the category of class occupies some kind of special place in the class-race-gender mantra.
Product of the times
In the end it's a complicated tally. The Committees come out of Chicago with sufficient political consensus and fresh energy to hang tough and make a few things happen. But they don't display enough clarity or dynamism to galvanise significant mass action or pull a whole new layer of activists into the group's orbit.
This outcome only in part reflects the good and bad decisions of Committee members. More basically, it is a product of the difficult conditions of the Committees' birth. The group was not forged in a period of left advance, driven by a surging mass movement demanding unity among partisans of fundamental social change. Rather, the Committees are a product of left crisis and retreat; traditional strategies and models have been discredited, and the mass movements remain in a relative ebb.
We veteran socialists who have survived this decade of crisis carry a lot of baggage. And while the next generation is full of fresh energy and ideas, new activists have been radicalised in a period of confusion and fragmentation and face unprecedented challenges. Under the circumstances, it is to the great credit of Committee members of all ages that they are taking on the task of keeping a small socialist structure alive.
More than anything else, the Chicago Convention demonstrated continuing determination to make sure a multi-racial, socialist, activist and pluralist organisation exists on the US left. Such a group meets a real need, especially for individuals in areas where the left community is not large. And it can be a crucial vehicle to provide continuity during this cold winter of socialist discontent.
But keeping any socialist group afloat today requires a delicate balancing act. Everyone faces the same difficult conditions: rampaging transnational capital, a conservative national political climate, continuing ebb in most progressive movements and the still-unresolved crisis of socialist vision.
Under the circumstances, organisations need to stay loose and flexible enough to interact with unorthodox approaches, especially fresh ideas offered by youth. At the same time they must retain enough coherence and infrastructure to avoid being swamped by confusion and destroyed. The challenge of juggling these often contradictory demands affects every socialist institution that aspires to be more than a self-satisfied sect.
A multi-tendency socialist group like the Committees of Correspondence would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The left was still frozen in rigid ideological corners and the various tendencies interacted mainly by hurling labels at each another. The left's traditional categories and "lines of demarcation" have not lost all their relevance. Some correlation still exists between most groups' policies and their origins in pro-Soviet or pro-Chinese communism, social democracy, Trotskyism and so on. But in a vastly changed world these classifications are porous, and have been largely superseded by new definitions and alignments.