I wrote this in 2014. A lot has changed since then, with a different crop of socialists entering the political scene, and the International Socialist Organisation has been dissolved: good riddance to bad rubbish. There’s still a level of toxicity that exists in the city’s left and among socialists in particular, but I did want to note the changes over time.
The election of Seattle’s Kshama Sawant as that city’s first socialist City Council member has given hope to some in Chicago, of the possibility of a socialist Alderman. According to In These Times, nearly a 100 people showed up at a meeting to begin the push for a candidate.
I’m just slightly amused, though, at the idea that anyone would actually want a Chicago socialist anywhere near power. When it comes to this city’s socialists, I tend to walk or trot briskly in the opposite direction when I see one approaching, or if I spy a congregation of them huddled in their usual conspiratorial manner. They’re ubiquitous in the city’s organizing landscape and can be found thrusting their copies of Workers’ World in people’s faces (and expressing more than a bit of contempt with their expressions should you decline). They tend to be older, white men—the report notes that a participant pointed to the lack of representation from the city’s south and west sides (mostly African American and Latino/a, respectively). But regardless of colour or ethnicity, Chicago socialists are a uniformly bilious lot: Diversity isn’t going to solve the problems with the larger culture of Chicago socialism.
For the rest of this piece, I’m only going to provide anecdotal evidence, based on my life here and my many years of organizing because, a blog.
I’m aware that there are individuals who identify as socialists who are not so troubling. I’m not discussing individuals here, but larger trends in movements and groups, and whether or not individual socialists are good or bad is not the question. Admittedly, Chicago “socialists” are also a loosely-knit group, as evidenced by the ITT report, and I know a lot of people tend to float towards them or self-identify as socialists because they’re desperately hungry for some kind of radical analysis. Eventually, most people flee. Some years ago, one of my students told me about attending a couple of socialist meetings on campus, and being driven away by the sexism and general cluelessness about race and ethnicity.
But that’s only the tip of the problem with Chicago socialists (and I have no doubt my friends in other cities will echo similar thoughts).
Ordinarily, when I see the cusp of a new movement, I leave it alone because I think it’s only fair that new organizing and work should have a chance to find its way and work out the kinks before we begin to judge it either way.
But Chicago socialists are well-established as a nasty lot, and their qualities of nastiness and hoariness have a way of replicating themselves across generations, so I have no hesitation in calling them out. It’s no surprise to me when I meet 20-year-old socialists engaging in the same slimy tactics as their older counterparts.
If you want to kill an organization, the best way is to import a few socialists and watch the entire structure disintegrate before your eyes. I once received a frantic phone call from someone whose new organisation was rapidly being overtaken by young socialists who would show up at every meeting, take over the agenda without actually providing any agenda of their own, and in general engage in mudslinging and diatribes that overwhelmed the fledgling group trying desperately to do political work. When asked by the caller what they might do against the onslaught, my response was simple: “You have to think of socialists the way exterminators think of roaches: letting even one stay is tantamount to letting in a hundred. Your best option is to simply sweep them all out.”
Other popular tactics amongst Chicago socialists include lying, distorting history, and slinging mud at their opponents. If you ever find yourself in an argument with one, expect them to lie about everything, including the colour of the sky above, and to insist that all of human history supports whatever political agenda they are fiercely supporting at the time. Some of the younger socialists, most of whom look and act like hipsters, are good at currying favour with queer, feminist spaces and of being very chummy with radical people of colour, which gives them a kind of street cred. At least for a while, and sometimes for a long while.
One of the established tactics of a certain kind of sectarian socialist is to enter an organization without revealing socialist ties, and then to slowly tear it apart from the inside (as was the case with the group represented by my caller). Eventually, their deep sexism and racism emerge and they’re unable to talk themselves out of their own bullshit, and their venomous tactics alienate those around them. For instance, I have no doubt that this post will incite quite a few to “reveal” whatever they can about me or the people I work with, in the most acidic terms.
You might ask: What is the political agenda of the average Chicago socialist? That, my friends, is a mystery. Mostly, to throw around phrases like “the working man” and “the proletariat”; the younger ones are a bit more sophisticated in their rhetoric but they demonstrate the same political vacuity. Some of them are good at corralling people at events, but they have no sustained political vision beyond simply being present and wanting attention, and are incapable of working with anyone to actually do anything because everything everyone else does, whether action or analysis or a combination, is simply never good enough.
Chicago socialists praise Sawant, but the fact is that someone like her would never have survived here. Hit upon relentlessly by mostly white older men looking for a multicultural sexual trophy, and talked over incessantly by the white women who would want her to stick to recounting stories of women’s oppression in her “native land,” Sawant would eventually have fled to somewhere where her political life was not overdetermined for her.
So, I’m amused at the idea of a socialist alderman because it implies that Chicago socialists can actually get their act together without tearing each other apart, trampling upon those who did not live up to their expectations, and spraying everyone around them with their vitriol.
In short, when it comes to Chicago’s socialist aspirations, it’s not Socialism but the damn socialists who are the problem.
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