Antonis Davanellos is a leading member of the Greek socialist organization International Workers’ Left (DEA). DEA had close, collaborative relations with the ISO until the latter’s disollution. Davanellos wrote the following assessment not long after the ISO’s final national convention held in February 2019, which he attended as an invited guest.

A few weeks after its annual Congress, the ISO in USA entered a course towards its dissolution, with the encouragement or tolerance of the leadership that was elected in this Congress.

During an unprecedented procedure of individualized voting —without collective discussion and political debate, without a prior sketching of a common alternative course—a majority emerged that decided to dissolve the organization.

The fact that such a dramatic decision was not up for debate during the convention proves that behind the complaints over the “authoritarianism” of democratic-centralism, a new “toxic culture” was used to impose a new political direction (which was in contrast with the statutory commitments of ISO members), and whose promoters didn’t hesitate to steer toward the dissolution of the organization.  

To explain this outcome, we should focus mostly on the political issues.

The ISO was built as an organization fighting for “socialism from below.” It didn’t recognize the Democratic Party as a reformist party (even comparable to the neoliberal degenerated social-democratic parties of Europe) and it refused to choose “the lesser evil” by supporting or voting for Democrats against the Republican Right.

Having a great experience of watching thousands of activists from 1968 on to this day (Black activists, feminist groups and LGBTQ activists) being lost to social resistance by searching for “positive solutions” inside the Democratic Party, the ISO characterized the Democrats as “the graveyard of social movements.” This standpoint was fortified by the political tradition of the organization and by the fundamental political commitment that all members of ISO had (“Where We Stand”).

This direction faced some challenges by recent developments. On the one hand, there was the pressure of Trump’s barbarism and the threat of the strong social block that emerged in support of his policies. On the other hand, there was the emergence of a broader, but very loose “new Left,” which expressed itself mostly around DSA and the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. This is a current of left radicalism, but a current that chose to work inside the Democratic Party.

DSA is a contradictory phenomenon. Of course if expresses a wave of radicalism against Trump’s policies and a massive reemergence of socialist ideas that are becoming popular in the US for the first time since 1968. But at the same time, these tendencies are expressing themselves still trapped inside the Democratic Party, which has a long history and experience with assimilating and manipulating social activists. Sanders himself may be a “child” of the politicization that came after 1968, but after his last radical campaign he ended up submitting to the Democratic Party “discipline” and calling for support to… Hillary Clinton.

More recently, some members of DSA, like Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, have achieved important electoral victories. Such successes work as both a “hopeful call” and as a new “temptation.”

Until now, the ISO faced this phenomenon with United Front tactics. Collaborating in the movements and in political discussion, but maintaining organizational independence from a “current” that had not decided yet how it stands in the face of the crucial issue that is called the Democratic Party.

This political direction collapsed as the second electoral fight of the Trump era was coming closer. The slogan “anyone but Trump” was becoming more pressing, while the hope of Sanders, a “left-winger” standing against Trump was becoming more alluring.

During the same period, the ISO was going under a process of renewing its leadership. Steering everyday political activity was in the hands of a younger political cadre, which was not defined by the long period of “moving against the current,” but by its larger engagement in the forefront of recent struggles.

The majority of this new leadership was won over the perspective of merging with the loose “new Left” of DSA. During the discussion before the Conference, it opened up all the issues of the necessary changes to the politics and the organizational function of the ISO. It ascribed the prospects of the organization to an ill-defined “creation of an independent socialist party in USA.” A crucial issue concerning this prospect was whether participating in electoral lists around Sanders or not.

This prospect was in contrast with the political tradition of ISO and the fundamental commitments of its members. The old leadership of the organization, accepting its defeat, remained silent, stating that everyone would stay in the organization as “loyal members” so that they would be there when real political questions were presented clearly. During the Conference, a strong tendency (IS, or Independence and Strugglee Platform) emerged. While it agreed with many criticisms of the old leadership, it stated clearly that it was not willing to follow a path of “convergence” with a left-wing tendency inside the Democrats.

Under these pressures, the ISO Congress failed to discuss and decide on the most crucial issue: It postponed the debate on electoral tactics to an extraordinary “electoral” Congress to be held in September.

This doesn’t mean that it was a “neutral” Congress. It adjusted the ISO to important political choices, organizational functioning, and habits of the “broad Left.”

Without discussion, without a clear decision, without a clear understanding of the importance of such a change, a regime of permanent tendencies was born.

Also without discussion and a clear decision, the ISO de facto retread to adapting to the post-modern policy of “identity politics.”

Insisting on unified politics and unified procedures inside an organization and rejecting organizational separatism was viewed as oppressing “comrades of color” that lose their right to organize and act autonomously based on their “identity” as Black or latinx activists. The same goes for women or activists of the LGBTQ community.

The result of the acceptance of this idea was the emergence of the functioning that allowed the rapid turn of ISO towards the direction that the convention didn’t decide. As one of the main proponents of this “turn” argued: “Either we find a way to change the ISO… or we find other ways to merge with the new socialist movement.”

What followed was a wave of “calling out” against incidents of internal oppression. Unfortunately, this was politically “oriented.” Organizational measures were taken instantly against members of the old Central Committee and the main representative of the IS Platform, meaning against anyone who represented the refusal to the turn towards Sanders and DSA. Yet again, the promise of “blossoming internal democracy” became a method of political purging.

The risk for anyone who unleashes or tolerates such a “machine” is that at the end of the day it is doubtful that they will be able to control it.

This is what happened in the ISO. The wave of “call-outs,” disillusionment and resignations led the organization to collapse. Whoever wanted to engage in DSA or the electoral campaign of Sanders, is now free to do so: But from an even worse position, as individual activists and not as an organization that aims to intervene concretely in a conjuncture that is very difficult anyway.

The fall of ISO is the fall of one of the last strongholds of “1968 Leninism” in USA. It is the fall of an organization that produced important activity, important political contributions and an important theoretical development (especially on the issues of antiracism and antisexism), fighting “in the belly of the beast,” against the mightiest capitalist class and the most ruthless state machine on the planet.

The international revolutionary Left is becoming poorer. Yet another negative example is added to the efforts to chart the needed course against a twin threat –that of “toy Bolshevism” and extreme sectarianism and that of liquidationism and the prevalence of vulgar tacticism. But the effort to chart this course shall continue, because it is interwoven with the needs of class struggle and the actions of millions of people in their struggle to free themselves from exploitation and oppression.

In this struggle, we are sure that we shall meet again with the good comrades we met in ISO.