The Sojourner Truth Organization: Notes Toward a History

Back again, after a long absence.  My best excuse is that I was busy writing the talk that I gave last Sunday at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair.  To prove it, I’m posting the text of my talk here.  A couple of notes are in order:  first, the discussion after the talk has encouraged me to rethink some of the criticisms detailed here (but I’ll let you all try to figure out which ones…).  Second, the spoken version of the talk deviated slightly from the text here, but only slightly.  Finally, I’d really like to get critical feedback on this post, not least from those who are on the receiving end of my criticism.  NEFAC, Chris Crass, I’d like to hear from you…

Solidarity,
Mike

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“An Organization of Revolutionaries Who Tried to Think:”
The Sojourner Truth Organization and its Legacy for Anarchists
Montreal, QC     May 21, 2006

Okay, how many people here have ever worked in a factory?  (A handful.  Okay.  I haven’t.) How many have been to a direct action anti-fascist protest?  (Yeah, me too…)  And how many have had conversations about “whiteness” in an anti-racist context?  (As expected, just about everyone…)

Those of us who haven’t worked in a factory have still most likely worked a job where we hated our bosses, and taken some action on that basis, often bypassing whatever union apparatus might or might not have existed for that purpose.  Those of us who have been involved in anti-fascist work have probably also spent some time arguing with other protesters that liberal multi-culturalism is not an adequate answer to the threat of fascism.  And those of us who have discussed “whiteness” are most likely also familiar with the concept of “white skin privilege,” whether or not we embrace it as a way to understand racism in North America.

In that case, everyone in this room is indebted, in one way or another, to the legacy of a small group of Leninists called the Sojourner Truth Organization, which hasn’t existed for more than twenty years.  Now, “indebted” is probably too strong a term, but the general point is that anarchist politics in the new millennium owe much to the influence of STO, despite the lapse of time, the obscurity of the group, and the obvious differences in political orientation.

My goal today is to talk about that influence, and to use the history of STO to offer some comradely criticism of contemporary anarchist practice and theory.  To do so, I’m going to look at three different arenas:  the concept of white-skin privilege; the practice of direct action anti-fascism, and the world of workplace organizing.  In each case, I’ll compare the experiences of STO in the 1970’s and 80’s with that of anarchists over the last ten years or so.  In keeping with STO’s tradition of encouraging sharp debate, I will offer criticisms in stark language, and my take on contemporary anarchism as expressed in this talk may be simplistic or overly harsh.  My goal is to stimulate discussion, not to hurt anyone’s feelings or dismiss anything out of hand.  I am happy to be corrected if I make factual errors, and I welcome disagreements with my political interpretations.

STO was founded in Chicago at the beginning of 1970, and for the first several years its activities were limited to workplace organizing in the Chicago metropolitan area.  In the mid-seventies, STO shifted its political work away from factories and toward anti-imperialist solidarity work.  At the same time, it expanded geographically, first merging with like-minded groups in Kansas City and Iowa, then growing to include groups in Denver, Portland, San Francisco, and elsewhere.  As the eighties progressed, the group shifted strategically once again, this time toward intervention in what were called “new social movements,” such as student and anti-nuclear struggles.  Around the same time, the group shrank again, losing all of its non-Chicago membership by 1984 or so.  Not too long after, the Chicago group dissolved, and STO ceased to exist. 

From beginning to end of STO’s existence, one of the group’s guiding principles was the notion that white people, including white workers and poor white folks, have certain privileges that give them advantages relative to any and all people of color.  The idea of white skin privilege is now probably best known among anarchists through the journal Race Traitor, which not coincidentally was co-edited by Noel Ignatiev, who was a founding and long-time member of STO.  Race Traitor was particularly popular with some segments of the membership of the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, and again Ignatiev was briefly a member of L&R in the mid-90’s.  A different version of the white skin privilege analysis has gained currency among those anarchists inspired by the writings of Chris Crass and in turn by the work of feminists of color like Elizabeth Betita Martinez.

I have some problems with both these versions of the white skin privilege analysis, which I’ll get to in a second, but in the “pure” form articulated by STO, the concept seems to me clearly sound.  Two hypotheticals, to be brief:  one, a black corporate executive driving a BMW is far more likely to be pulled over by the cops (and possibly harassed or assaulted) than a poor white guy who has either overextended his credit to obtain the same car, or else has stolen the vehicle.  Two, contrast the experience of a skilled electrical engineer from Mexico, who is forced into day labor or other low-end work upon arrival in Chicago, with that of a white worker with far less experience and training who is able to advance without great difficulty in an engineering firm.  Both hypotheticals seem plausible to me, and in neither case do I think we can adequately explain what has happened without direct reference to the privileges granted white people on the basis of our skin color.

STO took this analysis and tied it to an overall understanding of the nature of capitalism in the US, arguing that white supremacy and in particular white skin privilege acted as a dividing force aimed at preserving capitalist hegemony by limiting the collective power of the working class.  The strategic conclusion, then, was that proletarian revolution was impossible until the divisions in the working class had been overcome, a process that required struggling against the privileges granted to white workers.  Without granting either the level of top-down deliberateness that some members of STO attributed to the ruling class embrace of white supremacy or the lynch-pin status granted to white skin privilege by more recent groups like Bring the Ruckus, I think this understanding of capitalism and revolution is also sensible.  It is interesting to note, however, that most of STO’s contemporaries in the white left (both Marxist and anarchist) disagreed vehemently. 

In fact, it is hard to imagine how reviled this analysis was in the early 1970’s within the white left.  (The black left, by contrast, had been the source of the analysis in the first place, and was largely supportive.)  The white skin privilege line was denounced as anti-working class, as strategically divisive, and as inaccurate historically.  I don’t have time to deal in any depth with these criticisms, but I want to point out a certain similarity between the STO approach to revolution and that of most anarchists today.  In both cases, a key argument is advanced that the route to revolution cannot be made easier by use of apparently convenient short-cuts:  STO criticized “black and white unite and fight” approaches, arguing that they were doomed to failure because they evaded the lived reality of white supremacy.  Similarly, anarchists rightly criticize authoritarian leftists for believing that a sufficiently disciplined vanguard can successfully lead a revolution, because this approach ignores the need for mass activity if a revolution is to succeed.

Before I move on, I want to return briefly to the contemporary anarchist versions of the white skin privilege analysis and offer some comradely criticisms.  Essentially, I think both versions mentioned previously (the Race Traitor and the Chris Crass versions, for lack of better names) are infected with a sort of creeping liberalism that undermines the original value of the analysis as a tool for revolutionary organizing.  First, the journal Race Traitor has sometimes been criticized for focusing too heavily on individual experiences and actions, minimizing the prospects for collective (much less mass) challenges to white supremacy.  In terms of the publication itself, I think this critique is a bit one sided, but in my experience it does accurately reflect the problems of many anarchists who are heavily influenced by Race Traitor (Bring the Ruckus presents a partial exception here).  The culprit may be primarily internal problems in the anarchist tradition relating to the unexamined relationship with liberal individualism, but the Race Traitor version of the white skin privilege analysis certainly plays into these problems rather than combating them.

Second, the Chris Crass version of the white skin privilege analysis suffers from a similar set of difficulties.  Rather than focusing on individual actions, however, it does emphasize collective responses to white supremacy.  Nonetheless, it slides into liberalism when strategy is considered.  That is to say, the best Crass and his comrades can offer is a potential road to the amelioration of social inequality.  There is no approach to revolution in his writings, or rather, “revolution” is reduced to a transformation in consciousness and what the situationists called “everyday life,” rather than indicating a comprehensive process for re-working all social relations, whether economic, political, or cultural.  Obviously, the consciousness and everyday life aspects of revolution are important (and have too often been ignored by authoritarian leftists, as well as many anarchists), but they are not the only ones, nor even necessarily the most important.  To STO’s credit, the group understood the relevance of consciousness, but placed it in the context of social action at the point of production, a framework that is almost entirely lacking in Crass’ writings.  In this context, the materials Crass and others have produced defending participation in electoral politics, while thoughtful on some levels, merely serves to reinforce the liberalism implicit in his approach to the white skin privilege analysis.

One of the dangers implicit in the Chris Crass approach I’ve just described is that to the extent that the left downplays the comprehensive nature of revolution, the door is opened ever further to organizing by the revolutionary right, or, to use the common shorthand despite its historical baggage, the fascists.  Because both right and left revolutionaries represent a challenge to global capital, and because both groups will depend for success on the sympathy of masses of marginalized and oppressed people, some of us have begun talking about the concept of the “three way fight.”  In more ways than one, this conception of the world, and the strategies for action associated with it, are also derived from the experience of STO.

Through the first several years of its existence, STO dismissed the potential threat of fascism, rightly criticizing those leftists (including some sections of the Black Panthers) who denounced the ruling class as actually “fascist,” while wrongly accepting the notion that fascism only represented a “last-resort” ruling class strategy, rather than an autonomous or semi-autonomous movement aligned at least in some ways against capitalism.  The first (and for several years, the only) document STO published on fascism, “Fascism in the US?” (1976) by Don Hamerquist, articulated this line quite clearly.

Hamerquist, another founding and long-time member of STO, has since atoned for his errors, most recently writing one of the main essays in Confronting Fascism:  Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement.  This book, which was the jumping off point for the talk I gave the last time I was here in Montreal in 2003, can be seen as one of the key documents of the “three way fight” perspective to which I and others adhere.  The transition from dismissal of fascism to recognition of its autonomous threat is one that began while Hamerquist was still active in STO, in the late 1970’s, partly due to the influence in STO of Ken Lawrence, a communist militant living in Mississippi who received periodic death threats from Klansmen and neo-Nazis. 

Lawrence raised the issue of fascism’s challenge not long before the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, when Nazis, Klansmen, and at least one paid police informant shot and killed five communists at a “Death to the Klan” rally in North Carolina.  The shock of this event forced a rethinking of assumptions about fascism within STO (and within much of the broader left as well).  Throughout the rest of the group’s existence, STO members were involved in a range of anti-fascist work, both national organizing and local work in Chicago, Kansas City, and elsewhere.  In Chicago, neo-Nazi activity surged in the eighties, with rallies in Marquette Park (a traditionally white working class neighborhood that had been the site of a racist riot during a visit by Martin Luther King in 1966) bringing attention and prestige to various fascist groups.  STO responded by participating a range of counter-organizing and direct action efforts aimed at harassing the fascists without embracing the sort of multi-cultural liberalism that so often is seen as the only alternative.

In many ways, these anti-fascist actions of the eighties can be seen as precursors to the approach taken by Anti-Racist Action and other direct action groups over the last ten years.  In Chicago, at least, former members of STO provided inspiration and support to some of the best ARA actions of the past decade.  Many of the discussions about the “three way fight” perspective began as conversations between ARA militants and former STO members.  The Chicago ARA grouping that pushed many of these ideas within the ARA milieu is now defunct, with several participants having left Chicago, but the influence of these discussions, and their practical effect on anti-fascist organizing, is still being felt through efforts like the blog “ThreeWayFight” (http://threewayfight.blogspot.com).  

(It is worth noting that a different, more institutional and less confrontational version of anti-fascism draws on roots inside STO as well.  The work done by Lenny Zeskind, a long-time member of STO, with the Center for Democratic Renewal in the nineties, contributed to the emergence of a variety of community-based, but definitely not anti-capitalist, anti-fascist coalitions in many parts of the US.  The CDR, in turn, was originally founded as the National Anti-Klan Network, one of the initial left responses to the Greensboro Massacre; STO members were among the founders of the NAKN in late 1979.)

Most anarchist participation in anti-fascist work over the past decade has embraced both the direct action and the anti-capitalist aspects of STO’s anti-fascism.  It has not, however, engaged extensively with the question of the three way fight, and it appears that many anarchists view the question of fascism’s autonomous character to be an abstraction and a distraction from the more pressing immediate work of organizing. 

From my perspective, especially as it has been informed by an awareness of STO’s long-standing commitment to theoretical debate and clarification, this is an unfortunate abdication of political responsibility.  It also has tangible, and negative, results in the present:  our organizing efforts will look different in substantial ways if we begin from the assumption that fascism is both revolutionary and at least semi-autonomous in character, than if we start with an understanding of fascism as the most reactionary form of ruling class politics or as the “last-resort” I mentioned previously.

My comrades in the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists have been at the forefront of anarchist participation in anti-fascist organizing over the past five years or more.  They have also done much in that time to highlight the centrality of workplace organizing as an important arena of work for anarchists.  In this context, NEFAC represents something of a return to the early seventies emphasis on “industrial concentration” that STO adopted at its inception.  However, the approach taken by STO was quite different in several key ways from that taken by NEFAC. 

When STO came into existence, the New Left was reeling from the sudden collapse of SDS in 1969, and the founders of the group were drawn away from student organizing and toward workplace organizing as a venue for challenging white supremacy and building a revolutionary movement.  From the start, members of STO took jobs in factories and attempted to make connections among the various forms of spontaneous resistance that were then common in a variety of industrial contexts.  For the first several years of STO’s existence, this approach was the defining characteristic of the group, which was referred to in left circles in Chicago as “those people who organize in factories.” 

Even when other left groups began to take an interest in workplace organizing in the mid-seventies, STO retained a unique position insofar as a fundamental tenet of its approach to factory work was to pursue an “extra-union” strategy.  In contrast to most left groups of the time (or of the present) that emphasized inner-union reform efforts (often through oppositional caucus structures like Teamsters for a Democratic Union), STO was precisely interested in building structures outside of the trade union apparatus, which they called “independent organizations.”  In practice, this approach often meant struggling simultaneously against management and corrupt local unions and avoiding the standard grievance procedures in unionized factories, while in shops where there was no union it usually meant organizing for direct action rather than to bring in a union.

The theoretical underpinning for this extra-union strategy was the understanding STO had developed of the limitations of unions.  This analysis went through several different manifestations, but the general notion was that unions are charged with getting the best deal possible for their worker members, and that to do so requires negotiations with management and the creation of a stable, ongoing framework for these negotiations (what STO called the “industrial legality compromise”).  Stability in this case means that unions have to be able to enforce the terms of any agreement both against management efforts to renege, and against resistance from the membership.  Thus, trade unions are both a weapon of the working class and a safety valve to limit the revolutionary potential of the class, ensuring that the weapon is used to obtain better working conditions, not to liberate the class as a whole.  In this sense, STO was less dismissive of trade unions than some (ultra-)leftists, but viewed their potential as strictly reformist, not revolutionary in any sense.  As Hamerquist argued in 1973, “The general function of trade unions is not the suppression of class struggle, it is the containment of it within the framework of capital.” (“Trade Unions/Independent Organizations” in Workplace Papers (1980), p. 38)

Since STO’s strategy was to build a revolutionary movement at the point of production, it could not pursue this path from within the unions.  At the same time, the group couldn’t simply denounce the unions, both because it realized their actual value for gaining meaningful immediate victories, and because it understood their broad-based appeal in certain sectors of the working class.  (However, STO also understood, in ways that many leftists did not, and do not today, that other sectors of the working class will be similarly off-put by any group that is too closely identified with the unions.)  In STO’s experience, the independent organizations were strongest during periods of semi-spontaneous worker militance, such as the build-up to a wildcat strike.  During those periods even active trade union militants would be drawn to the alternative formation, as the collective self-understanding of all the workers shifted temporarily away from what STO called “bourgeois consciousness” and toward “revolutionary consciousness.”

The goal was not to avoid immediate struggles for reforms, but to use them as a way to build collective self-awareness of workers’ potential power.  Examples abound, but I will limit myself to just one:  at a factory in Chicago with a corrupt union local, federal immigration police (the INS) conducted a raid to detain and deport undocumented workers, with the apparent complicity of both management and the union.  A large percentage of the employees, led by a core of militants (including some members of STO) managed to delay the agents’ entry onto the shop floor until the workers in jeopardy could be successfully hidden.  There was no attempt to use the grievance procedure, which would have been ineffective even if the union in question had been progressive. 

The solidarity displayed in this action was at least partly a result of in-plant organizing against race- and sex-based disparities in job duties, pay scales and working conditions.  This organizing was spearheaded by STO, against the wishes not only of the corrupt union, but also of union-reform minded radicals in the plant, who pushed instead for contract negotiations around changes that would superficially benefit everyone, such as across-the-board wage increases.  In cases like this (among many others) the union would not have been an effective venue for either the consciousness building struggles – which, in the short term, clearly benefited only some members of the union – or for the on-the-spot resistance to the INS raid, whereas the independent organization was well-positioned to take on both these tasks.  An important factor here was the willingness of the workforce to operate outside the bounds of legality to which any union apparatus would be obligated to adhere; this willingness was one aspect of the shift in consciousness described above.

While this approach clearly had its benefits, problems began for STO’s workplace strategy when the upsurge in worker militance receded as the seventies progressed.  At the same time, deindustrialization was accelerating a process that would eventually lead to the closure of many of the factories in which STO’s presence was most established, including the one I’ve just discussed.  In these sorts of situations, with limited worker momentum and increasing downward pressures on employment, most workers saw independent organizations as a utopian luxury, especially when compared to reasonably responsive unions that were willing and able to fight for and win immediate reforms. 

As a result, STO came to see the viability of independent organizations as limited:  they were likely to grow in times of struggle and shrink in periods of lowered militance.  By the mid-seventies, the group began to speak of a “lull” in revolutionary activity and workers struggles, even going so far as to make comparisons to the period in Russia between the 1905 and 1917 revolutions.  Accordingly, STO shifted its strategic emphasis toward the sort of anti-imperialist solidarity that was touched on in Dan Berger’s talk on the Weather Underground, because it had come to view revolutionary movements in the black, Puerto Rican, and Mexican/Chicano communities as the most advanced struggles then existing in North America. 

I won’t go into the details of this era in STO’s history, except to note that in the late 1970’s, partly under the influence of newly developing autonomist Marxist theories from Italy and elsewhere, the group decided to renew its priority on workplace organizing.  Unfortunately, by this time, almost all the members who still worked in factories had left the group, and the effort gained little traction.  Around the same time, struggles against nuclear power and weapons, as well as anti-fascist efforts, were beginning to pick up speed, and these areas of work dominated the last several years of STO’s existence.

Before opening up the conversation, I want to offer one last set of comradely criticisms:  as I understand it, the NEFAC position on workplace organizing largely rejects the independent organization model advanced by STO in favor of work within “the largest organized grouping of the working class” (NEFAC position paper p. 1).  (If I’m wrong, I’d like to hear about it during the discussion period.)  At least two things have changed since the mid-seventies that might have influenced this decision:  first, the leaderships of both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win are now increasingly in the hands of people who in the seventies participated in union-reform efforts led by radical groups like the International Socialists and the October League.  This has made many unions far more responsive to worker demands than they were thirty years ago.  Second, union membership has declined dramatically over the past three decades, and the industrial basis of working class life in North America has shifted away from old union strongholds like steel and auto, and toward uncharted territory in the service sector.

I would expect that most members of NEFAC will agree with STO’s critique of unions, but it seems that the strategic conclusions drawn in the seventies by STO are deemed unworkable in the new millennium.  The infrastructure for organizing offered by the AFL-CIO and especially Change to Win is remarkable, and there are relatively few limits on the ideological baggage that staff organizers can bring to their efforts.  However, if we agree with Hamerquist’s argument from 1973, that unions necessarily contain struggles within a reformist framework, then the fact that anarchists can work as staff organizers for major unions is in some ways beside the point, especially in a context of declining union membership.  This stands in stark contrast to NEFAC’s critique of “the existing unions,” which implies that restructured unions with a commitment to internal democracy and to militant struggle would not be bound by limits of the industrial legality compromise.

Here, I must admit that I have no personal experience in the world of workplace organizing, and that the members of NEFAC (whatever our disagreements) are far more active than I have been over the past couple years.  However, I am increasingly drawn to this arena as my research continues and as some of my closest comrades explore various methods of work, from the IWW, to the emerging immigrant and especially day-labor movements, to the recent rank and file organizing in Michigan around Delphi.  In that context, I have tried to apply to the present context the insights gained by STO through years of factory organizing.  One such insight, again encapsulated by Hamerquist in 1973, is that “In no way should we put ourselves into a position of opposition to union reform.  What we can do is try to explain why that is not our priority.” (p. 52).  Or, in the present context, we can try to determine whether it should be our priority, and explain to ourselves and others why or why not.

I don’t want to foreclose the value for anarchists of organizing within union frameworks, but I do want to encourage all of us to reflect on the limits of this approach, and to see what we can do differently.  One place where we can begin is with a question that has guided my research into STO’s history:  if STO focused on heavy industry as a pivotal arena for organizing within the working class (in part because of the way it believed that mass production “disciplined, united, and organized” the working class, better preparing it for revolution and a free society), and if heavy industry is now increasingly being outsourced to the other countries, then what is the equivalent pivotal sector today?  Is it hospitals?  Schools?  Immigrant day-labor?

I don’t have an answer to this question, but we all should be trying to clarify our thinking on the subject.  Making the right choice, and concentrating anarchist organizing efforts accordingly, could make a world of difference.  Like STO, we should strive to be “revolutionaries who try to think.”