The following is some correspondence that happened between Tribune of the People and Struggle Sessions in June of 2021. The Tribune sent out an email to members, supporters and fraternal organizations that included a ‘Criticism from a Tribune Reader’ and directed recipients to ‘bombard the headquarters’ and criticize the Editorial Board. At the time I was involved in both organs and was beginning to feel confident enough to express my opinions and raise criticisms of leadership. At the time, many of us felt optimistic that this was a genuine attempt at rectification and that the clear issues we saw could be transformed through the democratic process of two-line struggle and criticism and self-criticism. We discussed the issues at length, submitted criticisms to the Editorial Board, and sought to transform our own practice to improve the paper as a whole. Naturally our words fell on deaf ears, very little changed and within a few months the burnout and disillusionment among rank and file was ready to boil.

I only recently found out that the ‘Avid Reader’ who submitted this criticism was none other than Jared Roark himself, founder and former head editor of the Tribune, and this ‘criticism’ was nothing but an attempt to wrest control of the paper from behind bars in an Incendiary-esque maneuver for power.

Blissfully unaware at the time, I urged Struggle Sessions’ Head Editor Sig Hausner (Liam Swanson) that we should respond to the call with a a fraternal criticism. Like most Struggle Sessions projects when I was involved, I took the initiative and did the bulk of the work while Sig Hausner acted smart and took all of the credit. Nonetheless, this piece was one of the first times I was able to think for myself, stop worshiping leadership and tell them that they’re wrong. Thus it was one of the first steps toward the criticisms I started directing toward leadership later in the year (I say this not to puff up my own chest, but only to show how I came to start questioning the dogma I had been fed for years-one among dozens of such stories). In this criticism I am still thinking the problems of the cult in the language and ideology of the cult, so I no longer agree with the essence of the document at all. I am publishing it here so that people interested in studying the contradictions within the CR-cult have more primary material to utilize.

Below is the email sent out by the Tribune Editorial Board, the accompanying criticism as a pdf, the email sent by the Struggle Sessions Editorial Board to the Tribune, the SS criticism as a pdf, and an email from Struggle Sessions containing corrections to the criticism document. To reiterate, I condemn the content of all of these documents, and publish them so as to provide more documentation of the dogmatic and sectarian ideology followed by these organizations.

Deepen Criticism and Two-Line Struggle, Bombard the HQ

To our Comrades:

Last month, we received an important criticism of past work in Tribune from a reader which we share with comrades of Tribune and fraternal organizations. We of course have many thoughts on this criticism and have many things to be self-critical for, but we wish to put this into the hands of our organization and supporters in order to develop deeper criticism/self-criticism and two-line struggle.

The editorial board has made a mistake in not releasing this sooner. We have been reflecting on the criticism, drafting our thoughts and self-criticism, and seeking to address errors in our work that were pointed out, but we have not honored the criticism and shared it with our comrades in a timely manner, to follow its recommendation to bombard the headquarters.

There was never an intention to withhold the criticism, but we have been sluggish, liberal, and bureaucratic in our handling of it, and wish to rectify this immediately.

Below are directives primarily intended for Tribune Support Committees (SCs) and Official Supporters, but we welcome fraternal organizations to carry them out creatively as well and send your reports on these. We are extremely grateful to all of our comrades inside the organization and outside the organization for the work you do and hope to continue to earn your support by struggling against our errors and strengthening the organization and our work.

Directives (to be carried out as soon as possible, and ongoing as necessary):

1) Each Tribune SC should disseminate and study the criticism in an organized manner, and hold a discussion among the SC on its points, where you unite, where you do not, etc.

The SC lead should produce synthesis of these discussions including further criticism and proposals for courses of action, etc..

Based on these responses, the EB will produce further synthesis, self-criticism, and directives.

2) Each SC should carry out exercises of holding discussions with workers and the people on Tribune articles as described in the criticism:

“…assemble 20 or so workers with moderate to advanced social consciousness, read them a sample of articles and encourage them to interrupt when they hear something they do not understand, someone they never heard, or something that is unexplained.”

The form of these can be carried out creatively. Doing it in smaller groups will still be effective, or even reading one on one with someone. We leave which article/articles to study to you, but we recommend using a mix of short articles, editorials, and ones that you have questions about yourself.

The SC lead should produce synthesis of these exercises, the support, or criticism made of articles, etc. and send these to the EB.

3) Tribune members must engage in more active ideological struggle over Tribune’s content. Every SC lead should send in errors, criticisms, and questions on articles published on Fridays at least for the next month (and of course continuing after, but we ask for observing this for the four weeks following receiving this). We ask that these be sent in as timely manner as possible following publication. As Mao says “As for criticism, do it in good time; don’t get into the habit of criticizing only after the event.”

Of course, unless you are a writer or reporter working with the board, you will only be able to criticize articles once they are published, but this means sending in your criticism or question right away instead of sitting on it, especially if the political or technical error is harmful to the integrity of the writing and organization.

We note that we are now sometimes also publishing on Mondays and Wednesdays in order to distribute editing and improve quality. These articles should of course be analyzed and criticized as well.

For official supporters, we ask that you carry these directives out creatively, understanding that they will be applied differently depending on your capacity. For fraternal organizations, we also welcome you carrying these out in creative ways.

We look forward to receiving the input, criticisms and proposals from our comrades and humbly maintain our posts in service to Tribune of the People, the masses of the US, and the fight for socialist revolution.

For Revolution,

Editorial Board of Tribune of the People

Letter to the Tribune Editorial Board

Dear Tribune of the People Editors,

Attached is a letter written by the Struggle Sessions Editorial Board in response to your June 11 message and the Letter of Criticism from the Tribune reader.

We look forward to continued correspondence and discussion on these points, and to the deepening of the two-line struggle in the interests of imposing the left on the right and developing Tribune into the revolutionary newspaper it must be.

Fraternally,
S Hausner

Editorial Board

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Comrades,

We have noticed two errors in our letter that we hope to correct below.

We suggested that news articles and editorials should only answer questions already being asked by the mass movement. This is too reductive since part of the important role of the central organ is to pose new questions, to show the masses what questions they should be asking. We self-correct in the essay with “… or should present a question which isn’t yet being considered by the people but which ought to be” but then repeat that the former is what they should only do later.

In the conclusion we refer to systematizing the scattered ideas of the masses into propaganda. This is an incorrect formulation that promotes tailism: the main task of propaganda is not systematizing the already-existing ideas but introducing a revolutionary political line to the already-existing ideas. Rightism speaks all day on systematizing the scattered ideas and returning them to the masses, but neglects that the middle task, the introduction of Maoism and a proletarian political line, is the key and decisive step in this formulation. Otherwise we are simply returning the masses’ already existing ideas to them–precisely tailism.

The task of propaganda, again, is to link what the masses already know to what they need to know–this is identical to Mao’s formulation, and ‘what they need to know’ must be firmly understood as proletarian ideology and political line–most importantly linking the struggle for demands with the struggle for power.

Fraternally,

Struggle Sessions Editorial Board