[Click HERE to follow the entire debate on Tony Cliff's Lenin. For more discussion on revolutionary organisation, click HERE. Articles on left unity can be found HERE.]

By Pham Binh

February 10, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The first response to my “Occupy and the tasks of socialists” piece to be written by a leading member of an US socialist organisation is emblematic of what is wrong with the US socialist left.

I am referring to “The mangling of Tony Cliff”, written by Paul D’Amato, International Socialist Organization (ISO) member and managing editor of the International Socialist Review. He responds to my Tasks piece in his reply to a book review I did, writing:

Binh appears to be taking Trotsky’s pre-1917 “conciliationist” line (which Trotsky later repudiated) that the differences were not substantial enough (since both saw Russia’s revolution as “bourgeois”) for a split. After the Prague congress Trotsky attempted to organise the “August Bloc”, an effort to unite all the different factions of the movement. It began to collapse immediately after its first gathering. “The great historical significance of Lenin’s policy”, Trotsky later wrote of his policy of unity at any cost, “was still unclear to me at that time, his policy of irreconcilable ideological demarcation and, when necessary, split, for the purposes of welding and tempering the core of the truly revolutionary party”. Binh apparently rejects these conclusions. Perhaps his model is the August Bloc. This isn’t a guess. He says in his article “Occupy and the tasks of socialists”: Out of clouds of pepper spray and phalanxes of riot cops a new generation of revolutionaries is being forged, and it would be a shame if the Peter Camejos, Max Elbaums, Angela Davises, Dave Clines and Huey Newtons of this generation end up in separate “competing” socialist groups as they did in the 1960s. Now is the time to begin seriously discussing the prospect of regroupment, of liquidating outdated boundaries we have inherited, of finding ways to work closely together for our common ends. Above all else, now is the time to take practical steps towards creating a broad-based radical party that in today’s context could easily have thousands of active members and even more supporters. First of all, is absurd to compare the sectarian rivalries of the 1960s, in which Maoist and Stalinist sects without practically identical politics railed at each other about who is the “true vanguard”, to the factional disputes in the Russian movement between its revolutionary and reformist wing—organisations that had become mass parties in 1905 with deep roots in the working class. Secondly, a “united” socialist organisation that has in its ranks both those who consider North Korea, China and Vietnam socialist, and those who think that they are bureaucratic despotism; both Stalinists and genuine Marxists; and both supporters and opponents of the Democratic Party would be a still-born project.

Lesson: if you want to ignite a debate among US socialists about what is to be done here and now in the middle of the Occupy uprising, don’t write about Occupy, write a critical review of a Lenin biography written in 1975 by someone who died over a decade ago. Then the sparks will fly.

This is exactly what’s wrong with us, the US socialist left.

The fact that there has been almost no concrete and explicit discussion on the US socialist left about the new tasks Occupy’s eruption has created for us is disturbing. What little discussion happens around these issues occurs either in international forums like Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal or on the personal blogs of unaffiliated socialists like Unrepentant Marxist instead of through the US socialist left’s existing infrastructure — web sites, newspapers and magazines. This is another strong indicator that something is deeply wrong with us and how we operate.

To reply to D’Amato’s points: we are not in situation remotely comparable to early 20th century Russia, no one is trying to unite forces with diametrically opposed practical orientations under one roof, nor am I remotely comparable to Trotsky (a real shock to some, no doubt).

The words “North Korea” do not belong in any serious discussion about socialist organising in the context of Occupy. Period.

D’Amato claims it is “absurd to compare the sectarian rivalries of the 1960s, in which Maoist and Stalinist sects with practically identical politics railed at each other about who is the ‘true vanguard’, to the factional disputes in the Russian movement between its revolutionary and reformist wing” a few lines after he makes that very comparison between my call for liquidating the outdated, inherited boundaries that divide today’s US socialist left and the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s foolish 1912 attempt to unite all factions of Russia’s socialist movement in an attempt to paper over profound practical differences.

What basis for unity?

Absurd comparisons aside, D’Amato raises a crucial point: on what basis can or should the socialist left unite?

D’Amato’s answer focuses on the negatives, on the divides he claims we can’t bridge. He writes: “a ‘united’ socialist organisation that has in its ranks both those who consider North Korea, China and Vietnam socialist, and those who think that they are bureaucratic despotism; both Stalinists and genuine Marxists; and both supporters and opponents of the Democratic Party would be a still-born project.”

Paul LeBlanc, a prominent ISO member, defends the Cuban government and does not support the “call for the revolutionary overthrow of that regime by the Cuban working class”. Does this make the ISO a “still-born project”? My answer is no. Perhaps D’Amato disagrees.

D’Amato continues:

It is one thing for leftists of different politics to “work together”—this has and will continue to happen. It is another thing to think that simply lumping forces together with diametrically different politics and methods of work will create any kind of functional, practical unity. Certainly that is one lesson of the Bolshevik experience worth preserving. That is not to say that broad socialist party independent and in opposition to the Democratic Party wouldn’t be a great advance if such a thing were possible in the United States today—what Binh proposes, however, would not produce such a result.