International De Leonist Federation - Proposed Public Letter

Proposed public letter
by David Searles
11 February, 2005

At the turn of the last century Daniel DeLeon of the Socialist Labor Party developed a concept for the socialist reorganization of society now known as the Socialist Industrial Union program. In a nutshell, DeLeon stated of the SIU:

"The central administrative organ of the Socialist Republic - exactly the opposite of the central power of capitalism, not being the organized power of a ruling class for oppression, in short, not being political, but exclusively administrative of the producing forces of the land - its constituent bodies must be exclusively industrial."

In the past 100 years disagreements within the SLP and within groups that have broken away from the SLP have come and gone. Some of those disagreements seem intractable, such questions mainly revolving around "reforms"; and revolving around discipline within an organization, and there have been numerous others as well. However, remarkably, the SIU program seems more sound and almost universally accepted among those acquainted with writings of Daniel DeLeon.

We propose a loose voluntary affiliation of organizations and individuals who are in basic agreement with the Socialist Industrial Union program of Daniel DeLeon. The purpose of the affiliation is to serve as an umbrella entity under which affiliates may work together as they see fit to better promote the SIU idea.

A small committee has volunteered to help the proposed affiliation come into being, and to be contact persons. If you as an individual or an organization are in agreement with the SIU program and would like to participate in the writing of a simple charter for said affiliation, and just as important, to become an affiliate, please contact them through their forum at www.deleonism.org . The committee has tentatively proposed a name for the affiliation : International DeLeonist Federation or IDF.

We would like to have the affiliation in place well before the July 10th 100th Anniversary of the DeLeon speech through which most have become familiar with the SIU concept, 'Socialist Reconstruction of Society.' *

Thank you.

The IDF organizing committee.

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* This pamphlet is available through the mail from the New York Labor News catalog at http://www.slp.org/nyln.htm . It may be read online at http://www.slp.org/pdf/soc_recon.pdf (pdf format) or http://www.deleonism.org/srs.htm (text format).