The defunct International Socialist Organisation (ISO) in America was notorious for being among the most cult-like of all the Trotskyist sects. The horror stories I have heard about it are certainly worse than anything I experienced in the IMT. Here is one former member’s experience:
Liane Aronchick went to her first I.S.O. meeting in late October of 1999. She went to her last three months later. What happened in between was, to hear Aronchick tell it, a disturbing experience with group pressure.
Aronchick recounted her days as a comrade in an interview on February 15. At her first meeting I.S.O. members were “obsequious,” she said.
“They’re even nicer if you’re not a member. They come up to you and introduce themselves and say, ‘You should join’.”
Once she came on board, Aronchick began receiving three to four phone calls a week from I.S.O. members asking her to help sell the Socialist Worker or to post flyers. She also got calls reminding her to attend meetings and demonstrations. Besides the phone calls, Aronchick was frequently asked to contribute financially: monthly dues were $20 “or whatever you can pay”, she said, and she was also encouraged to buy books and pamphlets published by the National I.S.O.
But what bothered her, Aronchick said, was the pressure she felt to change the way she thought. For the duration of a 20 long I.S.O. organized bus ride from New York to a demonstration in Georgia the comrade sitting next to Aronchick tried to convince her that voting is useless.
“He wouldn’t let go until I agreed,” Aronchick said. “He would ask other people to join the argument on his side until I gave in. He said ‘I get the feeling you’re not agreeing with us.”
“They probe you,” Aronchick said. “You couldn’t have a friendly argument.”
Aronchick’s misgivings finally came to a head over the I.S.O.’s belief that government of the United States must be overthrown and socialism established through a violent revolution.
“I don’t agree with violence, but they would say ‘what other option is there?'”
Increasingly, the I.S.O.’s position on violence troubled Aronchick. After she had a particularly heated argument about violence with another I.S.O. member, an I.S.O. higher-up, who was not a Columbia student, was called in to talk to her.
“He called me up and said, ‘I’m sensing some resistance from you.’ He told me to come to the weekly meeting and antagonize the issue. Anytime I tried not to do something, they’d keep talking until I agreed to do it.”
Finally, Aronchick decided enough was enough and quit the I.S.O.
“It was really hard to leave. I felt guilty for leaving. But once I quit, it was like a 1,000 pound weight was lifted from my shoulders. They’re always pressuring you. There’s always another fight. If you have the slightest deviation of thought, they try to talk you out of it.”
Here is the story of an ISO member who was bureaucratically expelled back in 2014:
Where was the welcoming of debate and disagreement, and avoidance of personalism I was told about?
Why did nearly all comrades vote the same way? This pattern is even apparent at the ISO’s annual convention. For example, at the 2013 convention, there were 24 resolutions that were defeated, and nine that passed. All nine of the successful resolutions were proposed by SC or NC members. All nine were passed unanimously with the exception of one abstention.
Why did comrades feel the need to discuss certain ideas and problems privately (away from the leadership and most cadre), and ask you not to tell anyone that the meeting actually happened?
Why was I being told that I should not listen to certain comrades (or even to avoid them), under the pretense that these comrades were “not following democratic centralism” or “were doing things the wrong way”?
Why did leadership get upset when comrades communicated on Facebook with certain former members (see Lies and Accusations below), or when comrades posted on a subject they considered “internal”?
Why did a Branch Committee member tell me I was being “trained the wrong way” by a more senior member who “didn’t follow democratic centralism?” and that it “may be too late” for me?
At my first Socialism Conference in 2008, Keeanga T of the SC/NC backed me against a wall, stood an inch from my face and yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” She accused me of breaking democratic centralism by being “too critical of Obama” during a discussion. I asked other comrades if I had indeed done something wrong, and most comrades echoed, “Well you are too cynical about Obama, you’re going to discourage people excited about Obama from wanting to join.”
Another incident occurred at a Chicago district meeting after I proposed that an explanation for a recent expulsion from my branch be added to the agenda. For the next 10 or 15 minutes, the leadership yelled that expulsions are none of my business, that it was disloyal of me to question the leadership’s judgment, and that I was being disrespectful of comrades’ time for even asking this question when we had so many actually important things to discuss. A few cadre members expressed their agreement. (The other comrades who had privately told me they also hoped to discuss this at the meeting remained silent.) After this, it seemed that many comrades were keeping their distance from me.
The fraction I was in was also bullied on occasion. When we disagreed with the leadership on the direction we should take the work (i.e. the DC/BC wanted us to focus on the public option in addition to single-payer, which we believed was a mistake), instead of thoroughly discussing our political disagreements, the leadership tended to jump to accusing us of being ultra-left, sectarian, movementist, and a “faction” rather than a “fraction.” (This was not unique to the fraction I was in; other fractions were accused of the same things.) Our fraction actually wanted more help from our branches. But single-payer work was a very low priority for the Chicago district, even at the height of the national debate and actions and civil disobedience in 2008 and 2009. Our requests to discuss the work at branch meetings were often tabled for next week, and then next week, and so on.
Of course, our district was involved in work that was more prioritized in the ISO’s national perspectives, and I think that was correct. But if a fraction exists, time must be made for branch- and district-wide assessments of the work.
Many of the meetings and phone calls we had with ISO Chicago leaders Shaun H and Stuart E were more about shaming us than supporting the work we were doing. Tellingly, these meetings often left members of the fraction in tears. I wanted to tell someone about how we were being treated–that we were being called names instead of engaged with politically–but I didn’t know who to tell. I figured SC members already knew what the BC and DC were doing. Additionally, my fraction-mates–who felt our treatment was at least as awful as I did–pleaded with me to keep our criticisms secret.
When this particular woman questioned an aspect of the ISO’s political line publicly, she was told off by some other members for making this disagreement public. It later turned out that the ISO leadership had changed its mind on this issue, but did not want to destroy its image of infallibility, so the internal debate being conducted on the issue was kept secret.
For this crime, she was kicked out of the organisation and slandered by the leadership. And she is a black, working-class woman no less. This is the behaviour from the supposed anti-racist revolutionary socialists of ISO. The good news is that this disgusting cult no longer exists as of 2019, having voted to dissolve itself in disgust when a culture of cover-ups and abuse was finally exposed before the whole membership. If only its former sister party in Britain, the Socialist Workers’ Party, had done likewise during its own scandal some years back.
So much for Trotskyist democracy.