CLAUDETTE BEGIN and ALEX CHIS are both members of the Committees of Correspondence, a 2000-strong socialist regroupment project in the US. In Australia for the Democratic Socialist Party's annual conference, they spoke to FRANK NOAKES and CATHERINE BROWN about the CoC in the lead-up to its July founding conference.
"We're entering a very important, in fact, crucial, period for the Committees of Correspondence right now; we're about six months from the formal founding conference. The process has been going for about 18 months." said Alex Chis.
"The debate that is now going on in pre-conference discussion is crucially important because, if the Committees are to become a viable socialist organisation, to grow and attract people, they are going to have to have an attitude and program that seeks to be active in their own name. They'll need a perspective that wants to build the organisation, which, in general, has not been the case so far.
"People tend to participate in campaigns, generally, as individuals or representing other groups, as most CoC members would be members of other organisations such as unions or solidarity groups. People would then report back to the Committees on these areas of work, acting a little bit more like a networking organisation."
The Committees function in four main areas: northern California, southern California, New York and Chicago.
"There has been a reluctance to go through some of the organisational debates that people from different traditions have been through previously in other organisations. But people are more open with each other than in the past", says Begin. "Instead of people with different political ideas hating each other and not listening to each other at all, you'll all be in the same room talking. But there isn't an enthusiastic debate or discussion yet."
The debate is tentative, she says; everyone tries to be nice. But after 18 months, some people are getting tired of just being nice and feel there's a need for a genuine debate on where the organisation is going.
"But political discussion is now beginning and it's bringing forth a range of widely divergent views from classic social democracy — with some people advocating that the CoC join with the Democratic Socialists of America [DSA — a social democratic party] — to those with a revolutionary socialist perspective. Discussion at CoC meetings is very much anti-capitalist."
"The axis of discussion centres on the role of independent politics", says Chis. "Many members of the CoC have traditionally supported candidates within the Democratic Party as a method of changing society. This was made very evident in the New York City mayoral elections last year, when the New York committees endorsed David Dinkins — a black Democrat, but not a liberal or left Democrat — who'd been in office and acted just like any other politician. So concretely the axis of discussion will revolve around what kind of independent politics is viable and what it really means in today's world.
"Some of us would like the CoC to become a campaigning organisation: campaigning for abortion rights, for [abortion] clinic defence; doing solidarity work with strikers, such as the mineworkers' strike. To do the kind of things that are important to mobilise youth and the working class in America. The Committees have been slow to get up, and this has had an effect on the composition of the organisation. That's why the next period of discussion is really important; it will decide what becomes of the CoC."
With an average age of 40 years, the CoC is having problems attracting youth. Members are realising that if it is to grow into an organisation, it is going to have to attract radicalising young people.
There are issues mobilising young people in the US. The women's movement is the most prominent of these today; but the immigration issue is also running hot in some parts of the country. Protests against cutbacks at the local level to services such as public transport have brought youth and women's groups into action.
A coalition in San Francisco was formed against the mayor's campaign to make the homeless invisible by driving them off the streets. In one action, Begin says, 300 people went to the mayor's house and slept in his front yard — "as they put it, 'since there was nowhere else to go'".
The environment movement remains a potentially powerful organising force in the US that the left in general hasn't yet tapped into.
As the largest left grouping in the US, the CoC, which will discuss a name change at its conference, has the potential to be a radicalising agent in the permanently deteriorating social and economic reality. Much will depend on the July conference.