Solidarity (U.S.)

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Solidarity is a revolutionary socialist organization in the United States, associated with the journal Against the Current. Solidarity is an organizational descendant of International Socialists, an organization based on the proposition that the Soviet Union was not a "degenerate workers' state" (as Trotskyists argue) but rather "bureaucratic collectivism", a new and especially repressive class society.^[1]

Solidarity describes itself as "a democratic, revolutionary socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization."^[2] It comes out of the Trotskyist tradition but has departed from many aspects of traditional Leninism and Trotskyism. It is more loosely organized than most "democratic centralist" groups, and it does not see itself as the vanguard of the working class or the nucleus of a vanguard. It was formed in 1986 from a fusion of the International Socialists, Workers' Power and Socialist Unity. The former two groups had recently been reunited in a single organization, while the last was a fragment of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Solidarity's name was originally in part an homage to the Polish Solidarność — Solidarność had been an independent labor union which in Solidarity's view had challenged the Soviet Union from the left. As of the 2011 convention, Solidarity is a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International. ^[3]

History

From the beginning, Solidarity was an avowedly pluralist organization that included several currents of Trotskyism, socialist-feminists, and veterans of New Left groups. Solidarity sought to "regroup" with others to create a large revolutionary socialist and feminist organization. They hoped to initiate a broad regroupment that would include, for example, some of the fragments of the disintegrating New Communist Movement and many more socialist-feminists and New Left veterans. Discussions of regroupment and "Left Refoundation" have been initiated between Solidarity and other left groups of varying tendencies from the 80s to the present, but these have not yet led to broader fusions.

Smaller-scale regroupments have occurred, however. During the 1990s, two organizations fused with Solidarity—the Fourth Internationalist Tendency (a group expelled from the SWP) and Activists for Independent Socialist Politics (a Socialist Action split that had previously worked in Committees of Correspondence). In 2002, members of the Trotskyist League joined Solidarity.

Strategy

Solidarity members work in various unions for shop-floor militancy and rank-and-file democracy, and some have played key roles in maintaining and providing staff for Labor Notes magazine and Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Solidarity members have worked in many other mass movements in the US, including the anti-Apartheid, reproductive rights, LGBTQ, Central American solidarity, Free Mumia, anti-war, and Global Justice movements, as well as the Green Party and the Labor Party. Since the inception of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy in other cities in the Fall of 2011, Solidarity members have been deeply involved. Solidarity prides itself on a "non-sectarian" approach to building these movements, and traditionally has prioritized the movements over building itself: "Too often socialist groups have seen the development of a movement not for what it is and can become, but only what it might offer in the way of recruits. We reject this conception and affirm the need for an effective class movement in and for itself, which requires new forms of action, thinking and dialogue rather than repeating the known formulas." -- Regroupment & Refoundation of a U.S. Left, ^[4] Solidarity publishes a bi-monthly left journal, Against the Current,^[5] which is produced by an editorial board including Solidarity members and independent socialists.

In 2000, Solidarity endorsed both the Green Party's Ralph Nader and Socialist Party USA's David McReynolds for President (Solidarity permits joint membership in the Socialist Party USA). In August 2004 Solidarity again endorsed the candidacy of Ralph Nader. In 2008 Solidarity endorsed Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party.^[6] In the 2010 midterm elections, Dan La Botz, a member of Solidarity, ran for a seat in the United States Senate under the banner of the Ohio Socialist Party^[7] and received 26,454 votes, or 0.69% of the total vote.^[8]

References