BAMN's BAD BEHAVIOR -- Open Letter to Rose Aguilar, KALW, host, Your Call radio show

Here was a decent article about bamn's vanguardist tendencies. Some of their members like Ronald are pretty nice to talk to:

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/class-struggle/Content?oid=1065288

Yeah, Ronald (if you're talking about the same Ronald), one of BAMN's original founders in Berkeley, was around when BAMN was repeatedly, directly and purposely and SHAMELESSLY disrupting other pro-affirmative action student groups and when one of those other group's speaker, during the other group's Sproul Plaza rally, was assaulted on the Sproul Plaza steps, and BAMN members tried to literally wrest and steal the microphone from the speaker (the speaker's group's members immediately came to the speaker's aid):

BAMN didn't even see that it was even possible for them to embarrass or shame themselves no matter how disruptive they were -- NOT to university officials, NOT to the campus cops, but to OTHER student groups. *You* be the judge...

When every UC Berkeley pro-affirmative action, or pro-diversity, or pro-ethnic studies, or social justice student group back then put, "Not BAMN affiliated", at the bottom of all their fliers and posters, that ought to tell you something.

Hijacking of the Affirmative Action Movement
http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/000809.shtml

The following letter (circa 1998) by the IBT's Jason Wright (see http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no28/no28NewOrleans.html) documenting his leaving the Revolutionary Workers League is appendix #3 to Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency by Samuel Trachtenberg. In it Wright documents the RWL's leadership's history of attempting to neutralize internal critics (including eventually himself) by seeking to convince their followers that criticisms of themselves must reflect mental illness. a tactic now also used by the leadership of the International Bolshevik Tendency. In the letter Wright documents his own previous history of acting as a "handraiser" and unscrupulous hatchetman against the RWL bureaucrats opponents (a role he has now chosen to reprise inside the IBT), before receiving a bit of karmic justice in eventually getting the same treatment himself from his masters. In the experience of all social movements, it almost seems that some people are destined to be perpetual hacks. The IBT previously itself quite accurately described a similar regime loyalist hack inside the Spartacist League, a universal type most activists will recognize having encountered at one time or another............

http://www.regroupment.org/main/page_appendix_3.html

Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) (a reformist civil rights action committee), has long been under the thumb of the misnamed Revolutionary Workers League (RWL). Controlled by the RWL, BAMN has degenerated into a social clique good for little more than photo opts for their newspaper and giving left cover to the NAACP and Democratic Party. BAMN is the perhaps the lamer reincarnation of the RWL’s now defunct reformist women’s rights front group, NWROC. BAMN’s use of Malcolm X’s famous phrase in their name juxtaposed to their reformist civil rights agenda is symbolic of the RWL’s decent into opportunism and substitutionism, where objectively their actions constitute a transmission belt of bourgeois ideology into the worker’s movement.

The RWL/BAMN: a Rotten Reformist Cult



Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) (a reformist civil rights action committee), has long been under the thumb of the misnamed Revolutionary Workers League (RWL). Controlled by the RWL, BAMN has degenerated into a social clique good for little more than photo opts for their newspaper and giving left cover to the NAACP and Democratic Party. BAMN is the perhaps the lamer reincarnation of the RWL’s now defunct reformist women’s rights front group, NWROC. BAMN’s use of Malcolm X’s famous phrase in their name juxtaposed to their reformist civil rights agenda is symbolic of the RWL’s decent into opportunism and substitutionism, where objectively their actions constitute a transmission belt of bourgeois ideology into the worker’s movement.

The RWL evolved from the Spartacist League’s (SL) tradition. In its first stage of evolution the RWL retained the sectarian and cultish method of the SL - the sterile approach to life, of keeping its members cut off completely from the masses (the SL method of functioning); however, the RWL did not retain this approach for long. After a certain stage in its evolution, the RWL leadership created a culture of emotional dependency upon the leadership. This method allowed the leadership to maintain control of the group while allowing intervention in the mass movement. In the mass movement the RWL opted for the build your own front group method of building, something they could control and recruit from.

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with building working class based action coalitions and fighting for revolutionary politics inside them. But what the RWL does, is to waver between reformism and ultra-leftism. The RWL developed its own particular version of petty–bourgeois fetishism of “special oppression”. Behind these false theories, which divide rather than unite the working class, and are bolstered with a controlling leadership, they intervene in the class struggle around minimalist demands employing bourgeois means of struggle; fighting for legislative reform and favorable court decisions. By leading honest young revolutionaries down the road to reform these opportunists rob the working class of its most militant fighters. Turning rebellious youth into pawns of liberalism combined with petty–bourgeois fetishism of “special oppression” is an obstruction to the proletarian revolution.

As a direct result of its ultra leftism, the RWL made the classic mistake of substituting itself for the working class. We’ll present two instances which clearly displays the errors of its methods. While the error of one instance is relatively harmless, one turned out to have dire consequences. When Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor spoke in UC Berkeley in the late 1980’s, the students who attended her speech were conservative. Yet, knowing that they would not get support from the students, the RWL disrupted the O’Connor speech with signs and yelling. They were escorted out of the building and O’Connor continued her speech. This was a rather idiotic action, which clearly displays how the RWL tries to substitute itself for the masses. In this instance, their error was relatively harmless. However, on a darker note, in the early 1990’s, our organization, then called Revolutionary Trotskyist league (RTL), formed a united front with the RWL to defend the undocumented workers in San Rafael, CA. We organized a strong march of about 1000 workers to city hall. We told the RWL not to go into city hall and disrupt the meeting because this would give the state an excuse to deport the workers. But the RWL disrupted the meeting, while we stayed outside with the workers. A few days later the INS arrested hundreds of undocumented workers and deported them, ruining hundreds of lives due as the aftermath “little publicity stunt”. Such is the outcome from the sectarian ultra-leftist actions employed by the RWL which substitutes itself for the workers. Trotsky summarized it properly: “The sectarian looks upon the life of society as a great school, with himself as a teacher there. In his opinion the working class should put aside its less important matters, and assemble in solid rank around his rostrum. Then the task would be solved.” (Sectarianism, Centrism, and the Fourth International, Oct. 22, 1935).

On the issue of “Special Oppression” the RWL separated the oppression of women, blacks and Latina/os from the working class and its struggles. The RWL has proved itself incapable of applying the Transitional Program in different stages of the class struggle, creating petty bourgeois “specially oppressed” movements, involving circulation of typically meaningless flyers with a laundry list of demands that do not apply to the concrete situation, but which revolve around the maintenance of the RWL’s cult around infantile slogans that keep youth emotionally tied to the RWL’s “rebellion”. For example, a revolutionary party cannot simply put forward the demand to "abolish the family" or "smash the family," as proposed by the RWL. As Trotsky pointed out decades ago, "You cannot abolish the family; you have to replace it." As far as true socialists are concerned, the family structure cannot simply be "smashed." It has to be replaced by a higher social structure, which, in turn, cannot simply be created out of thin air, without the overthrow of the capitalist system, the seizure of power by the working class, and the establishment of a planned economy! In fact, even after the socialist revolution, the family will not be abolished overnight; it may take several generations, and the development of socialism itself, before the nuclear family as we know it will cease to exist. Unlike the RWL, revolutionaries do not march into the workers' movement and demand, in an ultimatist way, that the family be "smashed." Today, revolutionary Marxists fight within the working class for women's liberation by organizing around demands such as: free abortion and contraception on demand; free, high-quality, 24-hour child care in every community and workplace; and a labor party, based on the unions, with a fighting class struggle program.

The RWL tends to fetishize oppression, especially women's oppression. This approach was manifested by the RWL in the 1990s. Adapting to petty-bourgeois pressures, the RWL characterizes the oppression of women (as well as gays and other social groups) as "special" oppression, implying that the oppression of these groups exists independently of class society. The issue of “special oppression” was addressed over one hundred years ago, by Alexandra Kollontai, the only woman on the Bolshevik central committee, and the USSR’s first Minister of Social Welfare, who stated simply, “The followers of historical materialism reject the existence of a special woman question separate from the general social question of our day. Specific economic factors were behind the subordination of women; natural qualities have been a secondary factor in this process. Only the complete disappearance of these factors, only the evolution of those forces which at some point in the past gave rise to the subjection of women, is able in a fundamental way to influence and change their social position. In other words, women can become truly free and equal only in a world organised along new social and productive lines…” (The Social Basis of the Woman Question, 1909) According to the RWL, capitalism can be overthrown by building a party based primarily on the oppressed in society (regardless of class). The RWL tailed mini-cross-class movements such as ACT-UP and BACORR without criticizing them. Thus the RWL tailed these movements who are petty bourgeois without class consciousness. Kollontai, once again comes to the rescue, putting this issue of cross-class alliance to rest in stating, “Class instinct – whatever the feminists say – always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of “above-class” politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their “younger sisters” are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women. But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the “rights of all women” become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class, content to leave the younger sisters with no rights at all. Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some ‘general women’s’ principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful.” (The Social Basis of the Woman Question, 1909)

The hard days of the Bush administration demoralized the RWL, revealing how clueless about revolutionary theory and practice the RWL really was, causing the party to make a one hundred eighty degree turnaround. From a sectarian ultra left cult they have transformed into a reformist cult buried in BAMN. No more revolutionary rhetoric, no attempts of laundry lists that pretend to represent the transitional program, no call for revolutionaries to establish socialism. BAMN has become an outfit for the “specially oppressed” through the reformist dreams of Martin Luther King. It stands for the return of the reformist civil right movement without even raising a clear revolutionary criticism of our black President, without clearly saying the truth that Obama, who is doing the dirty jobs for American imperialism, is nothing more than an Oreo – black on the outside to deceive the masses, and white as cow’s milk on the inside.

The current method of the RWL/BAMN is to recruit youth and offer them socialism tomorrow through adventures into legislative reformist such as the Dream Act Campaign.

In her mind-numbing, reformist fashion, the RWL’s "commissar" Shanta Driver delivered a speech at the Dream Act March in September 26th, 2008 asserting the work of BAMN on the Dream Act campaign is an enormous triumph for the working class. She is nonchalant about or oblivious to the fact that the fruits of their hyperactive organizing for the Dream Act campaign have been laughable at best. Either she is consciously wants to control the youth and mislead them as a manipulative bureaucrat, or she believes her own delusional rants.

The Dream Act campaign clearly displays the reformist methods of the RWL and how it relies on petty-bourgeois methods of struggle (i.e. petition campaigns, letter writing campaigns, endorsements from "progressive" politicians tied to a program of jaded demonstrations, used mostly to garner “revolutionary street-cred”. They can’t envision proletarian means of struggle so they lead radicalizing youth to reformist legislative campaigns dressed up with minor street actions.

It’s no surprise that the RWL makes no call for the Dream Act to be allied to massive strike action, to defend the right of workers to cross borders/ or raise the demand same work same contract both sides of the border. Thus, hundreds of militant youth in the front-line of struggle are derailed into Shanta’s pastime of pussy-footing with politicians in this futile “legislative reform”.

Internally the RWL is a terrible cult. The RWL’s support of North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was not a rebellious act against bourgeois society but an adaptation to its backwardness. In bourgeois society a relationship of a 50 year old msn with a 9 year old boy can only create emotional damage to the boy. The RWL applies this into its own cult; thus, youth in the RWL are abused sexually by the older cadres and some develop emotional trauma.

This put in perspective, BAMN is nothing more than a cult. The youth are abused sexually by the leaders, and those who disagree with the main leaders (like Shanta) are put in mental institutions. In this respect the RWL oppresses opposition like the Stalinists who put oppositionists in mental institutions in the Soviet Union. Leaders like Shanta have nothing to offer the youth of today but half-assed legislation, anti-depressants or a trip to the psych ward! We don’t want our youth to go there! RWL is worse than a child predator, and BAMN activists are their prey. BAMN can be seen lurking in our public middle and high schools trying to devour the minds and lives of future militants. We mustn’t tolerate this in the worker’s movement.



Appendix

[1] Letter (circa 1998) Jason Wright documents the inner
 workings of RWL. The psychological warfare, deceit, and betrayal of worker’s democracy, from a first person ex-members point of view. http://www.regroupment.org/main/page_appendix_3.html

[2] The Dream Act has limitations on who qualifies for PELL grants, and is a bogus solution for immigrant youth, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act

[3] We reject the RWL theory of the “specially oppressed” issue apart from the class issues of capitalist society. This theory led the RWL from ultra leftist adventurism to organizing reformist front groups. Simply put, “specially oppressed” groups (women, minorities, LGBT, etc.), are not class homogeneous. Adapting to radical petty-bourgeois activists in the specially oppressed communities as opposed to building working class based organizations to fight for the rights of oppressed groups resulted in the degeneration of the RWL. Ultimately the RWL dropped both the proletarian program and workers’ methods of struggle. Here we do not imply that the partial improvement of the day-to-day lives of the oppressed within the framework of capitalism in decline are impossible, rather we argue that it this period workers will only make gains through massive battles fought using workers methods of struggle such as strikes, factory occupations, and mass workers assemblies. Such a fight will open up the lessons and experience the class needs to go through to become capable of throwing off the chains of capitalism once and for all.

[4] “What do we mean by a bourgeois psychological make-up that dominates the life of the organization? Most people who are attracted to a progressive or a socialist organization do not change their psychological alienated character after they adopt socialist ideas or become ‘Marxists.’ In their emotional world and their way of thinking
they do not really break with the functioning and general ideology of this society. This is true in particular in times when there are no signs of revolutions or social change.” Alienation in the Post Cold War Era, (Chapter 12, How the Alienating Features of the Socialist/Progressive Movement Contribute to Its Failure) http://www.humanistsforrevolutionarysocialism.org/Current_Articles/Dialectics_and_Alienation.htm

[5] A brief analysis of the psyche of cult leaders like Shanta Driver: “Most of the top leaders in the parties, who never dealt with their own alienation and humanity, act like bourgeois politicians. They are driven by the passion for power triggered by the impotency of their ego (like Clinton, for example), and their failure to be a compassionate loving person. They enjoy the domination and manipulation of other people, and they use the theory of socialism and Marxism in a demagogic and manipulative fashion, that is, to make the
members of the group dependent on them. In the hands of such leaders, socialism and Marxism have little to do with scientific objective thinking and practice. Such socialism and Marxism are rather manipulated and used in a demagogic way by the leaders to defeat their opponents and to wrest control of the movement.” http://www.humanistsforrevolutionarysocialism.org/Book_Chapters/Chapter%2012/Chapter_12.html



HUMANIST WORKERS

FOR REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM

http://www.humanistsforrevolutionarysocialism.org

e-mail: hw4rs [at] yahoo.com