Cliffism: Trotskyism in Decay
How the British SWP’s politics foreshadowed the collapse of the ISO
This was posted to my blog Rise on New Foundations on the (now defunct) thesocialist.website. Since it is no longer available there, I decided to repost it here (my old blog) so I can share it around again.
Not that long ago the ISO was the largest organization on the far left. Even though it was tiny by historic standards, around a mere 1000 at its peak, it was much larger than Trotskyist and Stalinist organizations that claimed the same Leninist legacy. Then, in 2019, it dissolved after experiencing a protracted crisis.
There are many lessons that the American left must learn from the collapse of the ISO. The organization made many serious political mistakes over the years that lead to its demise, some of which I am not quite qualified to take up here. Foremost among those was the ISO’s reluctance to embrace truly Leninist anti-racist politics and the organization’s concessions to male chauvinism that prevented rape cases from being properly handled. However, I believe that both of these issues were exacerbated by the undemocratic manner in which the ISO was organized. The long-standing methods of organization, inherited from the British Socialist Workers Party, allowed a small number of abusive leaders to preserve their control over the organization for decades, and to force out all who disagreed with them.
The British SWP might now be almost more famous for the rape scandal that rocked the organization in 2013, the same year that the ISO covered up a rape scandal of its own, than for any of its contributions to working class struggle. For organizations ostensibly dedicated to revolution and the emancipation of women and all gender-oppressed people, such scandals are a sign that something is rotten at the foundations. Indeed, the ISO and the SWP shared more than rape scandals, they shared a common intellectual tradition, Cliffism. I don’t have the time or energy to chart the history of Tony Cliff and how the charismatic militant from Palestine was able to build the SWP, an organization dedicated almost entirely to carrying out his political lines. The cliff notes version can be found in an excellent article by Sam Farber that deals with how Cliff maintained his role as the unquestioned ideological leader of the group. That role in the SWP has now been taken up by Cliff’s protégé Alex Callinicos who to this day rules the SWP as his own personal fiefdom. In my experience, the methods of organization developed by Cliff that are described in the Farber were deeply ingrained in the ISO as well. These political ideas and organizational practices provided the basis by which the ISO’s own Ahmed Shawki and Sharon Smith were able to maintain a similar degree of control over the group for decades. While Farber’s article deals with exactly how this worked in the SWP, I think it is important to showcase these same tendencies in the ISO so that they will be avoided by leftists in future.
First among these was Tony Cliff’s understanding of the Bolshevik revolution. As Sam Farber argues, for Cliff the revolution was a testament to the genius of Lenin as a political organizer. Lenin, in Cliff’s eyes, always knew when to make the right political intervention, tacking back and force and emphasizing a different aspect of Bolshevik politics at each key moment. Cliff called this “bending the stick” and held it up as the gold standard in political leadership.In the ISO, like in the SWP, these interventions were expressed in the form of “political perspectives.” Every year before convention, the Steering Committee would come to an analysis of the current moment and prescribe a broad political strategy and focus. The goal was then to “win” the convention to this perspective, bending the stick hard against alternative understandings of the current period. Todd Chrieton, in an since deleted essay on his blog, described this system as “perspective fetishism” and it was used as a bludgeon against democratic initiative by the rank and file membership. For example, during the 2018 convention, the leadership argued that an economic crisis was imminent and thus that the political moment called for a return to organizing on college campuses focusing on selling our newspaper Socialist Worker in order to expand the membership. A small number of dissident members argued instead that labor militancy was on the rise and submitted proposals that would have pushed the ISO away from campuses and towards labor organizing. (Unfortunately, this group also included Joe Richards who it would later come out had been credibly accused of rape and had only been protected from expulsion by steering committee meddling in the disciplinary process). For daring to challenge the “stick bending” by the steering committee these comrades were treated with disrespect by the steering committee and with drunken belligerence on behalf of Ahmed Shawki. They were told that their proposals violated ISO procedure and asked to withdraw them.
As a member, this incident demonstrated to me the reality of the Cliffite model of organization we had borrowed from the SWP. The national convention, although in theory the highest body within the organization, functioned as a “transmission belt” for the steering committee’s perspectives. This was made even worse by the slate system, also borrowed from the SWP, by which the SC was elected. Under this scheme, instead of electing new members of the steering committee individually from the floor, each year the steering committee would propose a slate of candidates for the next steering committee. While members could also propose alternative slates from the floor, in practice this almost never happened. This insured a continuity of leadership where the undeclared leadership faction, centering around Ahmed Shawki and Sharon Smith, was able to maintain itself indefinitely. Up-and-coming cadre who agreed with the Steering Committee’s perspective could also be “brought on” or coopted into the old leadership by being added to this slate. The successful election of the Steering Committee’s slate was such a foregone conclusion that every year those nominated purposefully bought flights that left a day later than other delegates in order to participate in the first meeting of the Committee.
This model was also replicated at the Branch and District levels as well. Like the steering committee, these committees were elected by slates proposed by the existing branch and district committees. According to training documents for new committee members, these committees were also supposed to be part of the transmission belt, adapting national perspectives for local conditions and “winning” the branch to their local perspectives.
This organization-wide use of slate elections and transmission belt committees combined with the ISO’s “perspective fetishism” allowed the leadership free reign to “bend the stick” and they constantly tacked back and forth between looser and tighter organizational norms while forcing dissidents out. The strength of this system was its ability to preserve the organization and its leadership for decades. Its weakness was its complete divergence from the norms of democratic centralism the ISO was supposedly in favor of.
The culture that this style of leadership fostered was hostile to independent initiative and enforced a strict party line. “What do we think about ________?” was a common question by ISO members engaging with a new subject of political work. What “we” thought almost always was handed down from on high through transmission belt committees or Socialist Worker (the Org newspaper). The idea of “cadre” became synonymous with long-time members who were close to ISO leadership. Those who questioned the leadership were often accused of “being influenced by identity politics,” or being “anti-leadership.” Those who experienced these accusations say that they were treated as pariahs by local leadership and never given the opportunity to “come on” any leadership bodies. Many of the best trade-union militants in the country were ex-ISO members who could no longer put up with having the stick bent in their faces.
Thus, in following Tony Cliff’s example and seeking to preserve the organization and its leadership above all else, the ISO strangled in the crib the “seething democratic support” that was necessary for real democratic centralism. The organizational politics of Tony Cliff and the SWP valued above all else the conservation of leadership and just as Trotsky warned, “If the leaders seek only to preserve themselves, that is what they become; preserves – dried preserves.” This is the final destination of any Cliffite organization, not healthy democracy, but dried up and mummified obedience.
