The Marxist Center extends comradely greetings and sympathy to member cadre formerly of the International Socialist Organization. We recognize the need of the whole socialist, communist and Marxist left to confront sexual harassment, assault and rape in our organizational and movement spaces in ways that both support survivors and limit the potential for future harm by perpetrators.
The experience of betrayal by a trusted leadership, of dashed hopes for an organization refounded on a new and more democratic, feminist, anti-racist, and rank-and-file basis, and of loss of political home is one that is hardly unique to ISO members, but is always deeply painful and disorienting. We stand with those calling for accountability for perpetrators of rape and other forms of gender based violence, as well as with those investigating and calling to account organizational practices of bullying, racism, transphobia and other forms of discrimination.
We affirm the hope of many former members that what comes from the legacy of this long-standing revolutionary socialist organization can contribute in the future toward the development of a organized, working class, revolutionary marxist politics, and the need for revolutionaries to be organized toward this goal.
At the same time, we want to acknowledge and support individuals and collective efforts by ISO members, former members and close collaborators in a period of reflection and reorientation. We believe that the best chance for the emergence and development of a powerful revolutionary Marxist current in the USA will come from such reflection on our experiences as organizers and activists, and the history of our socialist organizations and working class social movements.
Without regretting the loss of a structure that was capable of condoning and hiding rape and which damaged so many committed Marxist militants, we nevertheless hold out hope for the possibility that those committed to revolution, to the liberation of all oppressed people, to the independence of the working class, to working class feminism, to black and indigenous liberation, to trans and queer liberation, to democratic forms of organization, to the end of all forms of imperialism, and to the abolition of class society itself can work practically, together, in concert for these ends.
As always, we welcome collaboration with individual organizers and groups of militants toward building working class power on the shop floor, in tenants unions and in working class organizations for self defense, and those organized for the advancement of social and civil equality and the autonomous power of the oppressed. We look forward to building with former ISO members and groupings who remain committed to working class power and an anticapitalist vision for a future society “from below.” We have a world to win, and like all thoughtful revolutionaries today, are only just beginning to think through, experiment with and develop the forms of organization most useful and necessary to that task, in a period of intensifying struggle when they will no doubt be indispensable.
Bread and Roses,
Marxist Center Delegates Council