From: glevy-AT-acnet.pratt.edu
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 14:06:51 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: SWP


James Miller wrote:

>    Recently Lisa Rogers posted a message asserting that
> SWP members were required to choose companions or marriage
> partners from within the SWP or YS. This is not true. There
> are many SWP members who have wives, husbands, companions
> or partners who are not in the SWP.

As I recall, the SWP had no *formal* policy regarding companions (other 
than, at one point in time, that they should be "straight", i.e.. the 
infamous Barnes memorandum). However, there was an informal policy which 
actively encouraged party members to have relationships with other party 
members. Moreover, many relationships ended when one person in a 
relationship resigned (or was expelled) or when one person became part 
of a "minority." This was not a matter of formal policy, but it was a 
fact nonetheless. In my perspective, it reinforced the cultish nature of 
the SWP, i.e. party members generally only came into social contact with 
other party members and were thereby isolated from "outside" influences.

>    The SWP is a democratic centralist organization. It is
> democratic in the sense that its program is decided by
> majority vote of democratically-elected delegates at a
> convention held every two years. Its leadership is also
> elected by the convention delegates. It is centralist in
> the sense that all members are required to abide by the
> decisions of the convention.

The SWP is "democratic centralist", to be sure, however, I wonder: to 
what extent was the democratic centralism of the Bolsheviks different 
from the democratic centralism of the SWP? SWP members have been 
expelled for smoking a joint or talking to someone who they were 
prohibited from talking to. Zinoviev and Kamenev, on the eve of the 
insurrection, committed a somewhat larger breach of party discipline, 
but were not expelled and were, in fact, given significant posts in the 
Party, the state apparatus,(and, in Zinoviev's case), the Communist 
International.

In any event, aren't the conditions in the US today somewhat different 
from the conditions in pre-revolutionary Russia? Why assume that the 
organizational form that possibly made sense in that period of time in 
that particular area of the world also should be emulated in all 
countries where conditions, to a large degree, vary?

>    Other groups on the left, such as the 
>Committees of > Correspondence, do not adhere to centralist principles.
> They do not attempt to train their members as disciplined
> members of a Leninist combat party. As such, they are
> primarily discussion groups.

The COC (of which I am not a member) does not "adhere to centralist 
principles", *however* that does not make that organization merely a 
"discussion group."

Jerry


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