I downloaded this critique of the August 2004 "Life After Capitalism" conference, posted by "Concerned Student, City University," from the New York Indymedia website shortly after the event.
The forces for freedom of speech and the free flow of ideas
won a small but significant victory this past weekend. Organizers of
the Life After Capitalism conference at New York's City University
Graduate Center were unable to eject left certain groups from the
conference, even after calling in university security.
The
Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth Club, Internationalist Group, League
for a Revolutionary Party, and the International Bolshevik Tendency
were the main groups threatened with being thrown out due to their
efforts to distribute literature at the conference. While the security
forces were trying to make them leave, members of another group, News
and Letters Marxist-Humanists, began to chant: "Freedom of Speech. Let
them Stay." The chant began to spread through the room, prompting an
organizer with a microphone to attempt to disperse other
conference-goers into sessions and away from the conflict. This did not
succeed. The chanting persisted and the protesters prevailed.
The targeted groups and others had requested table space in advance of
the conference but their requests were denied, on the basis that the
"space" would not be "receptive" to members of these groups. The
organizers’ vague and ideological definition of "sectarian left
groupings" – i.e. "you know who you are" – meant that they felt
entitled to exclude whoever they happened to call “sectarian.”
In another incident, in the question-and-answer session of a plenary
with Michael Albert, Andrew Kliman, and Peter Staudenmaier, a member of
the Spartacist League took the floor, but others in the audience tried
to silence him, justifying this action on the ground that the event was
non-sectarian. This “anti-sectarian” sectarianism was rampant through
the conference. At the same session, a panelist said that a working
group on alternatives to capitalism had requested a panel but was
denied one because the participants were interested in the thought of
Karl Marx. And the organizers engaged in sustained harassment and
visibly hostile baiting of "uninvited" groups throughout the event.
At a conference purportedly advocating the practicing of prefigurative
politics, this is unacceptable behavior – no different from the
authoritarian methods that Stalinism historically utilized to squash
dissent on the Left and maintain its control. Within our movement we
forget at our own risk Rosa Luxemburg's maxim that real freedom is
always the freedom of those who think differently. We must militantly
fight against all attempts to restrict the movement of ideas.
The bourgeoisie in this country is usually forced to respect the
freedom to distribute printed matter. It is sad when sections of our
own movement can't do as well. Debates should be won or lost on the
basis of the cogency of arguments, not by attacks, intimidation,
ridicule, and the control of resources. On this account, the organizers
of this event came out looking the losers as their thinly-disguised
diversionary tactics – such as their use of the PA system to shout down
the initial protest against exclusion, and their creation of scarcity
(limiting the space for literature the next day) – plainly revealed
their desire to control the information at the conference. And it is
chilling when leftist activists would have no problem with this
activity so long as such tactics were used against Left groups they
happen not to like. That this kind of thing occurred within our
movement at the very moment when we are embroiled in the fight against
the police-state tactics surrounding the RNC protests should give us
cause for concern.
The conference program stated that the organizers were stepping
aside to "look forward to everyone taking ownership over this weekend
(in an anti-capitalist sort of way)." Those who successfully protested
their exclusionary tactics did indeed “take ownership” in this manner,
but that was clearly not what the organizers had in mind. Despite the
conference title, “Life After Capitalism,” they displayed the pitiful
state of life under capitalism.
Concerned Student, City University
(For reasons of security and fear of retribution, name withheld)