Mark Phillips: The American Question

Milt Zaslow told me a story once which has remained vibrant in my memory. As a young Communist in, I think, the middle '30s he was beginning to have doubts about the evolution of the Russian dictatorship, the lack of internal democracy within the American party, and the competence of the International. Trotsky's critique was beginning to resonate for him. He was coming to question his loyalty to the party leadership, indeed his personal place within the movement as a whole. He wasn't sure where he belonged. It showed; everybody knew he was in crisis. He spoke about it one day with a fairly senior party functionary. He asked, "What do you do with people like me?" The answer was -- I've always pictured the fellow as a semi-gangster in a silk suit with a tilted fedora, talking like a tough guy out the side of his mouth -- "In Russia, we'd kill ya. Here, all we can do is expel ya."

But it's such a great question. Don't you think?

I mean that more than just politically. Personally, temperamentally, culturally.

One of the things I found most difficult during my years building cadre organizations was that I sometimes detested the cadre. It's very draining to spend the limited hours of your one and only lifetime shoulder to shoulder with people who in your opinion are bad people. Dishonest, or incompetent, or even morally corrupt, in some instances. In the case of a small number of specific individuals, I thought we had enough political agreement re the important stuff that if a cadre organization was the right thing to build, then they and I belonged together in the same one. But, I couldn't stand being there with them.

This is one of the reasons that I eventually stopped building cadre organizations. Primarily because I felt that it was strategically the wrong thing to do in American circumstances. But also because I didn't want to hang with people I couldn't stand.

Well, then. What do you do with people like me?

I'm hopeful that two circumstances will help to make the answer to that question easier as time goes on.

First, that a healthier vision of organization will emerge which will allow the American movements for peace and social justice to develop in ways that are more "organic" than they were able to be for so long, in the period after the Russian Revolution through the end of the Cold War. Where "organic" means, in large part, in closer relationship to American national traditions and cultural peculiarities.

Second, that the Web will allow smaller activist projects to work together in real solidarity, contributing to real movements, without the need to merge into larger organizations, cadre or otherwise. I guess you can call this idea one of "virtual organizations", where the important thing is that individuals should only work closely with each other if they like doing that; but that their little grouplets should strive to cooperate together in principled and supportive ways within the broader movements.

This isn't well thought out. That's ok. The world's big enough for experiments.