Letters: MUGs on MUG Congress
Over the course of Martin Luther King Day weekend, over a hundred Marxist Unity Group members convened in Florence, Massachusetts to debate our Tasks & Perspectives and Draft Program, changes to our Points of Unity and introductory readding group, and resolutions relating to our strategy towards DSA Convention. But on a larger level than any specific debate, the experience of being with so many comrades who were operating on such a high level was transformative, and these letters are in thanks to each other for that experience. Included are letters from MUG members, with a letter from a Bread & Roses observer incoming— Jean Allen
Noah
As a new member of MUG, it was stunning to see what democratic centralism looks like in practice. One of the MUG study group readings from Mike Macnair focuses on the difference between democratic centralism and what Macnair calls “bureaucratic centralism.” Seeing Congress first-hand showed that in practice. The congress was full of rigorous debate, differences in opinion, and a variety of voting margins.While I didn't personally have the most to contribute, I have a new understanding and appreciation for democracy. Congress showed our fight, not as the lies of the Cold War portrayed it, as a war between “democracy” and “communism”, but between a struggle of rigorous democracy through a democratic republic and a dictatorship of the ruling class under an undemocratic constitution.
Sofia
This year’s congress was my first as a new member of Marxist Unity Group and so I came into it unsure of what to expect. What stood out to me immediately, in contrast to my experience as a delegate to the DSA national convention in 2019, was the level of trust, good faith, and willingness to work productively through sharp disagreement that characterized the entire body. Members largely responded to procedural maneuvering and amendments haggling over seemingly small details not with impatience and hostility but with laughter and serious engagement on the merits. The sheer joy that comrades were taking in the democratic process was palpable as MUG members navigated long hours of deliberation with skill and grace. In a moment that stands out in my memory, a controversial amendment to the proposed minimum program that would have seen us step away from prison abolition as a minimum demand was defeated, and rightly so, but the resulting debate on the formulation of the abolitionist demand in the minimum program was generative and has carried on beyond the convention. I read with interest the article in the most recent MUG bulletin on this topic and expect that this conversation will continue as we work collectively to sharpen our abolitionist politics.
Lavender
“Poesía Perdóname por haberte ayudado a comprender que no estás hecha sólo de palabras.”
-- Roque Dalton, “Poetic Art”, 1974
It’s a common mistake in our movement to treat democracy like a simple substance that can be measured. But as the title of this journal indicates, it is much more like light and air–like a field through which political matter moves. But then, what is the composition of this matter? If it is made of words alone, that can’t explain why, in this era of nearly instantaneous communication, of discord and signal and zoom, socialists will travel hundreds of miles, take time off from their jobs, and spend countless hours on logistics just to have a debate face to face. Are we really so sentimental? Well, maybe, but we’re not crazy. There’s something real that we’re grasping towards, something important. I can’t fully explain it, but here’s an attempt: our politics flow outward from our collective subjectivities, and ultimately from the crystallized knowledge of sensory experience–from direct contact with the world. To be in the same place with comrades, to share if only for a few days not only the democratic process, but a collective experience of life–conversation, meals, the weather–is to remind ourselves of this truth. In this way, our Congress is a wellspring.
C. McAlister
I showed up to the Quality Inn around 4 o'clock on Friday. Slightly nervous, and with the Discord chat not active, I decided that if I kept one eye on the parking lot I would eventually see a comrade that I knew. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, there goes John S. sauntering across the lot. I stepped onto the balcony. "Hey, what the fuck you doin' up there? Let's smoke a cigarette! How's your union doin'?" More of us gathered in this way, and by the end of the night I was drunkenly arguing with Sid and Ben “The Scientist” about the political economy of the Confederate States of America.
And so Congress opened the next morning. Over the next two days, I felt a sense of comradery such as soldiers in the trenches must feel. It was amazing beyond words to meet many of you for the first time, and to see many of you once again! These relationships I will cherish, come the light of socialism or come the dark of fascism in the times ahead. I did not speak up much during Congress. I never stood up to argue for or against any amendment or resolution. I sometimes feel that I have an inferiority complex when surrounded by such bright and articulate comrades!
Yet even when I found myself voting alongside a small minority in some debates, I never for an instant felt as if any of us were anything but comrades-in-arms. The decisions made in Northampton might end up being world-historical, a footnote in a history book, or completely forgotten altogether. But when we gathered in that space, despite all disagreements and arguments, we gathered around a common goal that unites us. Our goal is an inspiring one, and one that will hopefully shape the course of things to come: Fight the Constitution! Demand a new Republic!
Two Essays From MUG Congress
Note: The following two articles were generated from two conversations at the same table during brunch after congress
Knowledge Develops Through Debate and Struggle
Sam
“Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice. “ -Mao, On Practice
“And do you think he would ever have tried to discover the truth, or to learn what he thought he knew though he did not, if he had not fallen into puzzlement and come to believe that he did not know and desired to know?” -Socrates, Meno
At Congress, I was consistently struck by the incredible intelligence, depth of knowledge, and effective ability to explicate complex and important ideas of just about everyone present. The level of intellectual and political debate going on within MUG, condensed into two days, was very high, much higher than I’ve ever experienced in any classroom, conversation among socialist friends, or in many reading groups that I’ve taken part in. I don’t just say this to laud ourselves; in fact, I took on the role of listener more so than direct contributor to this high level of debate! Rather, this is important to emphasize precisely because of our mission of putting politics in command, of bringing high politics (socialism and the class point of view) into organizing that is so thoroughly depoliticized, or at the risk of being depoliticized (the labor movement, but also tenant organizing, electoral work; the many domains in which the mantra “just do the work” is always intoned). To effectively bring socialism and high politics to the working class, and to our fellow socialist organizers involved in organizing and mobilizing the working class, we have to have a deep understanding of socialism, and of high politics, as well as a deep appreciation for what the daily and long-term work of socialist organizing in labor, in the tenant movement, in the electoral arena, actually looks like.
All of the above only exists as a result of practice and struggle. This is on two levels: avoidance of practice leaves only abstract theorizing, while avoidance of struggle, avoidance of real substantive disagreement in favor of papering over differences, leaves all involved completely incapable of developing a real political response to the dynamic of class struggle constantly going on around us. Concerning the former, the over a hundred members present at Congress collectively have thousands of hours of organizing experience across many arenas in the class struggle. And to the latter, having real substantive disagreement and working through those disagreements, happened at Congress! While Robert’s Rules provided a formal structure for debate, the underlying process of conversation and disagreement was, at its core, our collective attempt to reach a deeper, more effective understanding of both the political conditions that face the socialist project into the next year, and what ought to be our priorities going forward. This working through of conflict and disagreement existed before Congress and persists after it, of course; so much of what I gleaned from conversations with other comrades at Northampton was about political struggles with groups or individuals in their respective chapters.
Going into Congress, our members came with knowledge gained through practice, like Mao describes above; this knowledge, being further informed by a reading of history and philosophy (I never could have predicted just how relevant the 1912 Bolshevik social insurance campaigns would be!), was then refined in the furnace of debate, and then, returning to our respective home chapters, we put that developed and refined knowledge into practice. We “Do MUG!” For our ideas, our political project, to not only stay relevant but to create and assert its own relevance in the face of the reactionary tide and the economistic anti-political tug, opportunities for debate and struggle, like Congress, are instrumental.
On the level of the individual, and on the level of the DSA chapter (or, perhaps, the socialist ecosystem in a given city), the level of intellectual and political understanding is similarly determined by practice and struggle. The place of Marxist politics in Columbus DSA is a case in point. In a conversation with comrades Megan and Mike from Cleveland, Megan (who had attended a Columbus DSA social) noted the lack of socialist topics or political discussion (even in an admittedly informal context) when compared with socials hosted by Cleveland DSA. There shouldn’t necessarily be an expectation of high political discussions at socials, but it prompted reflection on my part about the place of political education and political debate in Columbus.
When I first joined Columbus DSA, there was no political education programming at all; there now is, but it can be further developed, to counteract a focus on organizing work absent some difficult political questions. In conversation with several other comrades in the chapter, it has been repeatedly brought up that, historically, Columbus DSA has been averse to caucus politics. All of these things are related! As tendencies and factions within DSA differentiate themselves and develop their ideas, deepening their knowledge and bringing that knowledge into context with their practical work, the need for education, for a shared intellectual and political vocabulary to debate with, intensifies. This is not to put down anyone in Columbus DSA; comrade-organizers in the chapter have been, continue to, and will continue to do fantastic work, and I look forward to working alongside them. The point is simply that, given the mutual relationship between knowledge and struggle, as one develops, so does the other.
Knowledge develops through practice (per Mao), and dialogue (struggle through debate) can reach the truth (per Socrates via Plato). At Congress, I felt like Meno’s servant, referred to in the quote above, who fell into puzzlement and came to believe that he did not know and desired to know. When it comes to socialist organizing, while I was a leader in a small YDSA chapter for three years and joined Columbus DSA a little over a year ago, I did not know what I did not know. And now, as a direct result of seeing the development of political knowledge in action, and taking part in it myself as both observer and participant, I am determined to discover the truth.
I spoke with Rashad and Lois on a few occasions, but most important here were the organizing conversations I had with both of them on my last day in Northampton, especially when, after listening to me describe the political context of Columbus DSA, Lois encouraged me to seek leadership in the chapter. My reaction, before I had ever read these words, was encapsulated in Mao’s On Practice:
"I am not sure I can handle it." We often hear this remark when a comrade hesitates to accept an assignment. Why is he unsure of himself? Because he has no systematic understanding of the content and circumstances of the assignment, or because he has had little or no contact with such work, and so the laws governing it are beyond him. After a detailed analysis of the nature and circumstances of the assignment, he will feel more sure of himself and do it willingly. If he spends some time at the job and gains experience and if he is a person who is willing to look into matters with an open mind and not one who approaches problems subjectively, one-sidedly and superficially, then he can draw conclusions for himself as to how to go about the job and do it with much more courage.
I was not sure then that I could handle it, and in all honesty, I still am not sure! But what I know now, and did not know before Congress, was that the only way to be sure that I can handle it is to take the step forward and to do it. Protagonism of the working class is a common theme comrades in MUG emphasize, but something that I had never really internalized before Congress, and honestly never before my conversation with Lois, did I understand that protagonism has to start with you and I. Up to now, I’ve generally avoided confrontation and tended more toward quiet disagreement or disapproval; this is not a method for enacting change!
Knowledge develops through practice and struggle, practice is deepened and strengthened by knowledge, and while one person alone cannot singlehandedly reshape political conditions, the process has to start somewhere. Seeing socialist deliberation in action reshaped my understanding of socialist politics. I look forward to bringing substantive political disagreements, expressed and worked through in a comradely and respectful way, to our work in Columbus DSA so as to develop political debate and political education: one small but crucial step toward a mass socialist party of the working class, and a democratic and socialist republic in North America.
Marxist Abolitionism & the Minimum-Maximum Program
Jean A
I’ve been a police abolitionist for only slightly less time than I’ve been a socialist. During my college years as an Obama loyalist progressive liberal in a historically radical state university, I learned an awful lot about human rights discourses. Further, as someone who politicized during the Bush years, the anti-war protests marked me with a deep distrust of the police and prison system. I distinctly remember seeing my comrades in a SUNY anarchist group insist we take the SIM cards out of our phones at every meeting we had, because so many of them were arrested during the Free Speech Zone era. And as a dirtbag barista living on Long Island, I saw first-hand the drug trade and the way that police treat crimes differently depending on the skin color of the offender. Those experiences came together when I interacted with my first protest movement post-radicalization, the 2014 Eric Garner protests in New York City. All this to say, I have a deep political and emotional hatred of the cruelty that is the American “justice” system, and a commitment to end it.
At the same time, the last four years I have been honed in on the thought that the greatest protest movement in a generation has been cresting and is in the process of dissolving. The local nature of funding battles against police departments means that, without a national-level struggle, we are each individually left to fight our own specific police department, while every individual police department effectively has the full force of the US government and capital behind it. We saw this in Stop Cop City in Atlanta, where some of the bravest and smartest political action we’ve seen this decade is slowly being broken down by an increasingly powerful police state.
Further, the nature of the demand itself poses struggles. Abolition itself is a transitional demand, a demand that we’re making of the capitalist state which we know we cannot achieve under capitalism. The issue with this is it makes our immediate tasks unclear, and the agitational nature of the demand leaves us vulnerable to a reactionary counter-attack. For the last 4 years, the press has used the election of some abolitionist city council people in some progressive cities across the country to make the argument that the police havebeen abolished in US cities, and that we basically live under a Deathwish-style crime regime. Within our movements, outside of the cadre layer, abolitionism is degenerating into a vibe, a faintly held memory of a belief, which is losing ground every day to a historic opposition to abolitionism within parts of the socialist movement.
During MUG Congress, a comrade proposed an amendment to our program which mixed the real criticisms we may have of the fuzziness of Abolition as a transitional demand with, in my opinion, unprincipled politicking. Under the justification that we do not want to be attacked for allowing Derek Chauvin out of prison, the amendment proposed that we only call for the release of Unjustly Imprisoned incarcerated people in the minimum program.
To quickly respond to that: Pu Yi did far more damage than Derek Chauvin ever did, and yet he was allowed to be rehabilitated and become a normal citizen of the Chinese People’s Republic, a resolution which I think we all prefer to the murder of the Romanovs. We live in an unjust society where no one is “justly” imprisoned, and rehabilitation needs to be the north star of our view on the carceral system.
The amendment was voted down by a small margin due, in the end, to this opportunistic framing, but it had so much support because it brought up another question. The total abolition of the prison or policing system is something we aspire to under socialism, but is not something we can achieve under capitalism. The fuzziness created by that difference puts us in the classic question of keeping to an ultraleft demand or compromising on the demand to “get real change done.” Either choice puts us out of the space of the Marxist minimum-maximum program and away from clarity.
Marxists did not adopt a minimum program with the intent that those minimum demands be just things we’re doing in the short term. The minimum program specifically addresses the parts of our society that keep the working class from governing it and what we should do to we remove them. Then and only then should we take government as socialists. Therefore, the minimum program must consist of a list of government policies that, when enacted, enable workers to take power. It is important to understand not just what is achievable or what would make a pretty demand, but what elements of the system erected around us are load-bearing. That is the heart of the minimum program which gives it a revolutionary clarity.
Socialists have attempted to parse the demand for abolition into the “achievable” demand of “defunding the police,” a defensive demand to slow the growth of the prison system. While the degree to which the police dominate municipal budgets is important, the issue with the police (as with the US carceral system) is not just its size. Our carceral system is “unsafe at any speed” and it grows from its own momentum. Again, the minimum program asks us not what is achievable, not what makes for good agitation, it asks us what elements of these institutions prevent workers from ruling. On prisons at least, I’ve identified two elements that I think propel their growth, and I would love for us to continue to think about what role policing plays in the contemporary US economy.
While we can see multiple prison regimes under capitalism and even just US history, the US today is marked by the scars of mass incarceration. The United States has the most prisoners by population. This emerged from the “prison fix,” which solved decades of Black urban radicalism through mass incarceration and the over-policing of working-class and nationally oppressed neighborhoods. This has two sides to it. First, any felon is permanently disenfranchised, putting them forever outside of the bounds of our democracy, which allows imprisonment to “solve” the problem of poor black and latino workers becoming radicalized. This had immediate repercussions (in the long-term imprisonment of many famous political prisoners) but it has also had a broader effect on radicalism in general. Because imprisonment for a felony carries with it the threat of total disenfranchisement, and because felonies rain so heavily on our nationally oppressed comrades, the legal threats implied in open and democratic membership, or political radicalism in general, are worsened. The “prison fix” was largely successful in its goal of destroying black and latino radical membership organizations. What exists in their stead is an ultra left/liberal ecosystem based around individual personalities and their friend groups. That organizational ecosystem is not the product of incorrect strategies, it is a response to the constant threat of police violence that marks black & brown communities. Thus, even if the police are not in every meeting we facilitate, the threat of imprisonment furthers the split between the white and non-white working class.
The second side, which promotes and advantages the jailers, is the continuation of prison slave labor explicitly allowed in the 13th Amendment. This allows mass incarceration to be used in support of any number of state industries, from desks to workbooks to firefighting, for far less than the minimum wage. This slave labor, despite being a small portion of the economy, plays a major part in the localities it is present by affecting the aggregate cost of labor, in a way we cannot affect. Try walking into a prison to organize the workers and see how far you’ll get. Hell, try and salt a prison and see how far you’ll get! Prison labor is so low cost not just because of the formal laws, but because of the amount of force needed to alienate the imprisoned from their labor. This is enforced by guards who are relatively well paid, thus locking a good portion of the population of prison towns into an alliance with the carceral system. It is no mistake that the Buffalo Tops shooter came from the area around Attica; this political economy generates white supremacy as a feature.
I think that this Congress shows us a way out of this problem, which can be elegantly expressed in a Marxist minimum program pointing out exactly how the prison system and prison fix weakens the working class. Closing prisons is important, but when we focus too much on the expansion of the prison system we can lose track of what drives that expansion: the need to have the threat of disenfranchisement hang over every crime, and the superprofits generated by slave labor. By fighting for the incarcerated to have the same rights granted to all other Americans, including the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the removal of a separate system of labor regulation and prison slavery, we will be at a point where, upon winning these reforms, despite not ending prisons, we will have neutralized the effects of the “prison fix.” I think that could be the heart of Marxist prison abolitionist politics.
