The Legacy of S.D.S.

[SonofRage]

I'm not sure if this is history or theory...



The Legacy of S.D.S. And Its Relevance To Today's Activists by Mark Alper

It is perhaps inevitable that the emergence of a new generation of anti-war activists has resulted in a renewed interest in the largest anti-war organization of the 1960's, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). This interest has been further stimulated by the DVD release of SDS-oriented documentaries, "Rebels With A Cause" and "The Weather Underground."

There are, of course, some significant differences between US military involvement in Vietnam during the 1960's and 1970's, and the events unfolding today in Iraq. In the former conflict, the United States inserted itself into a civil war between the Communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the US-backed Republic of Vietnam in the south, with the justification that our military intervention was necessary to prevent the spread of Communism in southeast Asia. In other words, the US policy toward Vietnam owed much to Cold War liberalism (the greatest expansion of US forces in that region occurred during the Johnson administration) against the backdrop of US-USSR power politics.

In contrast, the Bush administration's military adventurism in Iraq lacks any substantive political basis. There is no extant super power rivalry and the absence of any counterbalancing force has apparently led American policymakers to feel they have a free hand to bring regimes "into line" that they perceive as threatening to economic interests in the United States. Moreover, the Bush administration generally succeeded in filling the void in political justification for the war by appealing to anger, emotionalism and fear in the wake of the terrible and tragic attacks in New York and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001.

While it can be argued that emotionalism and fear were hallmarks of Cold War policy, which they were, it must also be said that US involvement in Vietnam did not represent a significant break from policies that had existed since World War II. The Bush administration's decision to affect regime change in Iraq, however, was in some ways a break with policy in the Middle East insofar as the regime it sought to change was one the US had supported militarily and technologically in the past. This is not to say that the US has ever shied away from active involvement in removing regimes it felt were contrary to its interests and prerogatives, as the history of Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Chile and other nations demonstrates. Perhaps the closest Vietnam-Iraq parallel in this regard was US involvement in a military coup in Vietnam which resulted in the assassination of Diem in 1963.

Another interesting distinction between Vietnam and Iraq is that the former conflict was fought on the grounds of anti-Communism, while the latter has considerable religious overtones. The battleground isn't "democracy versus communism" but "western faith versus Jihad," with biblical passages regularly used by President Bush to justify almost any policy.

And finally, the Vietnam war took place concurrently with Lyndon Johnson's much-touted 1960's version of the New Deal which he called "The Great Society." Major domestic anti-poverty and civil rights legislation was promulgated, and it was only the increasing costs of the war which put the breaks on Great Society liberal initiatives. President Bush makes no pretense of either compassion or liberalism, and only two years after the war with Iraq began, the latest federal budget proposes wholesale gutting of domestic programs in order to keep funding our military adventures thousands of miles away.

read more... (http://actiontendency.net/EW/current/sds.shtml)

[shadows]

History informs theory, so I'd classify this as having theoretical implications. Anyway, the distinction between Vietnam and Iraq is a major one, but the movement against the current war reminds some people of the 1960's. An echo, perhaps. SDS mutated so fast from the early sixties to the late sixties, from radical democratic ultra-liberalism based on middle class conscience to ideological Third Worldist radicalism (also middle class and guilt based). Lots of fine books have recently been published on Weatherman (Thai Jones, Bill Ayers, Roxanne Ortiz and Max Elbaum - these last two on Third World Marxism, another offshoot of SDS). But in many ways SDS was never much theoretical, even in its hyperMaoist groupings. Polemical, ideological, yes. But theoretical?

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by shadows
But in many ways SDS was never much theoretical, even in its hyperMaoist groupings. Polemical, ideological, yes. But theoretical?

All too true, alas...and it left us totally unequipped to deal with aggressive "hyper-Maoism" (good expression, that).

The "strong side" of SDS -- the radical "ultra-democracy" and the concentration on direct action locally based -- was never theoretically developed.

Instead, we relied on a mixture of C. Wright Mills, Herbert Marcuse, and Malcolm X -- adequate for a critique of U.S. imperialism but otherwise hopelessly incoherent.

It's quite astonishing when you think about it. Faced with the Maoist challenge, we were outclassed...by people who, after all, wanted to rely on the peasantry. :o

I can't think of a single occasion when anyone ever got up and said to them: what peasantry???

We simply lacked any basic understanding of Marx at all...and we paid a heavy price for our ignorance. :(

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[shadows]

There was, it seems, an affinity, unfortunately, between adventurism and polemical excess, on the one hand, and anarchoid tendencies on the other within SDS. Baader-Meinhof (aka Red Army Faction) put praxis, in its crudest sense, in place of theory, and against history. WUO, it could be argued, paralleled this 'theory of the streets.' Maoism's allure for SDS came not only from the little understood Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, but the ferment in the colonial/neo-colonial provinces. In France, according to Belden Fields' interesting book on Maoism and Trotskyism in France and the U.S., some Maoist grouplets were 'libertarian' - anarchistic. Tom Vague's book 'Televisionaries' is still a good read on RAF, and in addition to stuff by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Bill Ayers, et al., Robert Pardun's 'Prairie Radical' chronicles SDS in its Midwestern countercultural element. SWP's (US) legacy seems far more limited in many accounts to a 'Bring the Troops Home Now' liberalism, echoed by WWP/ANSWER in today's anti-war movement. Say, isn't David Gilbert, WUO vet, now an anarchist?

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by shadows
In France, according to Belden Fields' interesting book on Maoism and Trotskyism in France and the U.S., some Maoist grouplets were 'libertarian' - anarchistic.

Yes...I read that book myself just last year and noticed that. Evidently they fell apart, though I don't recall the details now.

Off the top of my head, I would think it difficult to be a "libertarian Maoist" -- you'd run into, sooner or later, Mao's insistence on "the good personality cult".


WUO, it could be argued, paralleled this 'theory of the streets.'

Possibly; I've only read a couple of books about the German RAF and it was a long time ago.

As an abstract strategic framework, the idea of "Bringing the War Home" seems not unreasonable to me. But the WUO was remarkably inept in implementing that pragmatically.

After 1970 or so, I don't recall anyone taking them very seriously. In fact, I remember people joking that they were a front group for the Plumbers & Pipefitters union -- as they mostly blew up public restrooms.


SWP's (US) legacy seems far more limited in many accounts to a 'Bring the Troops Home Now' liberalism, echoed by WWP/ANSWER in today's anti-war movement.

I agree completely. In SDS circles, the SWP's ritual spring and fall demonstrations were regarded as ceremonies, not protests. It looks like the present anti-war movement in the U.S. is still "stuck" in the same position.


Say, isn't David Gilbert, WUO vet, now an anarchist?

I do not remember him and it's certainly possible that he or anyone else may be calling himself an "anarchist" these days.

The deflated currency of American political discourse -- labels are not worth the paper they're printed on these days -- is such that we can have "anarchists for Kerry" and "marxists for imperialism".

You can't really tell anything about what people think anymore unless you have access to things they've actually written.

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[Severian]

SDS played an important role in getting the movement against the war off the ground - calling the '65 March on Washington, for example.

But after that, SDS largely ignored the growing movement and concluded that Vietnam wasn't the issue....sometimes mistakenly concluding it was about to end anyway. At one 1966 antiwar conference, Paul Booth, representing SDS gave a speech on stopping "the seventh war from now". At later gatherings, the SDS national leadership tended not to show up at all. They refused to support major antiwar actions.

Interestingly, this was one point of agreement between the early, ex-socialdemocratic leaders of SDS and all the later Maoist factions: abstention from the main social movement going on in the U.S. at the time. IIRC Weatherman once declared "the war isn't the issue anymore."

Of course, many local SDS chapters were involved in antiwar activity. But if you're going to look at the distinctive early SDS ideology, and at SDS as a national organization, you gotta acknowledge that it mostly ignored the war and the antiwar movement.


'Bring the Troops Home Now' liberalism,

A contradiction in terms. It was liberals who sent the troops into Vietnam, you may recall. Later "dovish" liberals typically supported gradual withdrawal or negotiations positions....in which they were sometimes joined by various "pro-NLF" super-radicals. In those cases were some "doves", at the peak of the movement, came to support immediate withdrawal, that's clearly under pressure of the demand's increasing popularity...a victory over liberalism.

In any case, the SDS leadership did not successfully lay out any other, more "radical" course for opposing the war; rather they increasingly ignored it.

[shadows]

There were attempts to put politics in command of the gun, as with the fightback conference sponsored by Prairie Fire, sometime in the early/mid-seventies. I agree with you that WUO had fallen into general disrepute/disregard by much of the left. the Guardian (NY), while not dismissive of WUO, was harshly critical. And this paper, once edited by Irwin Silber - of Sing Out! fame - was cozying up to Third World Marxism, a rival of WUO, at least superficially. After all, these two new 'communist' divisions, the morphed RYM/WUO, and the RYMII, or NCM, perceived their forces, and the thrust of capitalism at the time, quite distinctly.

And yes, labels have been degraded: Paul Berman, one-time 'anarchist' is an ardent pro-war contributor to moderate left publications, Christopher Hitchens, almost indistinguishable from any other capitalist apologist for war, Perry Anderson, et al.

And PL, blamed for splitting SDS in 1969, and once enthusiasts for Maoism, disavowed all nationalism, even that of the Vietnamese in their struggle against American imperialism; today, PL has itself morphed into unacknowledged 'left communism' of some sort, albeit with deep reverence for Stalin and defensive hostility toward Trotsky.

The legacy of SDS for today can be seen, my guess, in Bring the Ruckus and various other groups, but absent much Marxist analysis. The academic Marxists of NLR have finally yielded to their positions in bourgeois institutions, the grassroots activists to local reforms. What is to be done? Unlike SDS and other new left currents, today we must learn from the past, not repeat it, for today's world is not bi-polar (pun intended) but nearly unilaterally under the thumb of US capitalism.

Really, it seems that capital, mediating so much of everyday life, has succeeded in colonizing our consciousness through TV, cell phones, video games, intenet. Not that I'm situationist, though. The real economic dilemmas more and more people encounter will again lead to struggle, and the final demise of capitalism's vampiric rule. We can learn from SDS, Maoism, Trotskyism, New Communist Movement, Council Communism, but simple imitation isn't the key. And defending outposts of non-capitalism, like Cuba, is still important, for the fate of these affects us here in the belly of the beast.

[shadows]

'Bring the Troops Home Now' liberalism - cross class alliances. You know, the SWP (US) played on the divisions within liberalism. Yes, liberals got us involved in the war, but the liberals were divided when the war became a prolonged and costly effort. The USSR and the PRC were the ultimate targets of the liberals. Defending Vietnam was, it seems, a goal of SDS: bombing the Pentagon (toilet) and waving NLF flags were gestures in this direction. SDS's strategy was never single issue, though, as with Student Mobe.

[Severian]

"Cross class alliances"? The main class difference between SDS and the SWP (US) was the SWP had an orientation to drawing in working-class people to the antiwar movement - and as part of that, an orientation to the ranks of the military. If some liberal politician endorses our position - not us endorsing him - that can help in the process of broadening the movement by drawing in working people. Note that those who objected to - and tried to thuggishly block - inviting liberal polticians to speak, also objected to union officials.

While SDS was the most middle-class group possible, not only in composition but in political syndrome.

I'm curious how bombing a toilet or waving the NLF flag does more to defend Vietnam that pressing for the withdrawal of U.S. troops - or how it does anything at all to defend Vietnam, really. Immediate withdrawal is objectively the same as Vietnamese victory - in practice, not rhetoric.

SDS was not just multi-issue: it avoided the Vietnam issue. Others were more active with "support the NLF" sloganeering: Commitee to aid the NLF and so forth. Others tried to make Vietnam a major focus of a broad multi-issue group: NCAWRR, People's Coalition for Peace and Justice, etc. SDS's approach resembled neither.

[shadows]

Well, SDS did not see Vietnam in isolation: the oppression of the third world was summed up in Vietnam, and to fight for Vietnam meant, for SDS, to fight the colossus that was/is Amerika. SDS, in its later phase, perhaps degenerative, refused what it termed 'peace crawls.' And its student composition became an issue when Marxism seemed the only viable analysis of events SDS was grappling with. But really, there was no monolithic SDS. Even in 1969, when the split occurred, SDS schismed three ways: PL, RYM, and RYMII. And others who were effectively left out went into anarchism. SWP too was in a pre-split mentality: after Jack Barnes purged the ortho-Trots left in its ranks, SWP morphed into a coterie for Cuba and Grenada. I don't know, but did SWP organize, or attempt to organize, labor strikes against the war? I think Sparts claim some credit here.

The oppression of African-Americans, other nationalities, women, workers was central to the evolving ethos of RYMII. While I certainly don't embrace the Maoism/Third World-ism of the NCM, at least some attempt to connect the dots in supporting Vietnam, and the military victory of the Vietnamese over the Amerikan Goliath was made by this trend. Elbaum's book on the NCM is informative, and self-critical, in this regard. After all, the Line of March group, much-maligned, actually attempted some theory in the morass of new left/postTrot/Maoist madness. True, LOM wasn't up to the task.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2005, 08:00 PM
Well, SDS did not see Vietnam in isolation: the oppression of the third world was summed up in Vietnam, and to fight for Vietnam meant, for SDS, to fight the colossus that was/is Amerika.
A truism for any radical group at the time. No radical group had a single-issue perspective or activity. The whole "single-issue vs multi-issue" dichotomy is false and serves only to obscure the real questions.

SDS, as a national organization, avoided and ignored the biggest issue in world and U.S. politics at the time: Vietnam. With a couple brief exceptions.

The first exception was SDS' initiative in calling the first March on Washington against the war in Vietnam, in April 1965. This was also significant in that it was nonexclusive, breaking with the old peace movement's tradition of compliance with the anticommunist witchhunt. Calling and organizing this march was an important contribution that really got the ball rolling on the antiwar movement.

SDS' Kewadin convention that summer, however, decided to retreat from antiwar activity, and focus instead on the ERAP "community organizing" in poor neighborhoods. Perhaps they hoped to reproduce SNCC's experience in Mississippi. Todd Gitlin, who was an SDS leader at the time, later commented on "our failure of leadership - which was undeniable": "The leadership was already a closed elite, we didn't understand what an antiwar movement would be, we didn't have any feel for it." From Out Now by Fred Halstead, p. 65, quoting from SDS by Kirkpatrick Sale, p.214.

The second brief exception began in late 1967. A SDS National Council meeting in December of that year decided to turn towards antiwar activity and call "Ten Days of Resistance to the War" for the next April. Originally confrontationist tactics were proposed by leadership, but since some delegates opposed this it was modified to, tactics to be decided by local chapters.

Yet in March 1968 - in the wake of the Tet offensive, to make things worse - the next National Council meeting abandoned antiwar activity again...no mention was even made of the "days of resistance" the last meeting had called.

As Sale puts it (p.418-419): "the new shift of focus was expressed for the NC in a moving and persuasive shift by Carl Oglesby, who told the young delegates that the job of SDS was to turn from the issue of the war to that of racism. Radicals have done all they can now toward ending the war, he suggested, and adventures like the Chicago convention demonstration of schemes for involving working-class communities around the draft were not really going to help much. Radicals now should turn to the questions of black liberation and white racism..." Quoted in Halstead, p. 385.

It's good that they recognized the importance of opposing racism - though I'm not sure how much SDS contributed to that struggle in practice - but regardless of what else they did, it was wrong to abandon antiwar activity.

As the faction fight in SDS grew, the two sides squabbled over whether to verbally endorse the NLF or denounce them as revisionist...but agreed in ignoring antiwar activity. SDS split and disintegrated in November 1969, before the height of the antiwar movement. Most members of SDS simply dropped out, not joining any of the split factions.

I guess it's true that RYM II made some effort at antiwar activity, with mostly confrontationist tactics, though I don't know that much about it....in any case, it never had much of an impact on the course of events.

As for Weatherman, here's the article I refered to earlier: "THE VIETNAM WAR ISN"T THE ISSUE ANY MORE. Mainly because the war is over....The only thing left is for Nixon to find the American ruling class a diplomatic way of admitting defeat." Quoted in Halstead, p.524. That was written in November of 1969, 4 years before the U.S. withdrawal, 7 years before the end of the war, 1 year before Nixon's Cambodia invasion, apparently you really don't need a Weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing.


And its student composition became an issue when Marxism seemed the only viable analysis of events SDS was grappling with.

I'm not sure what you mean here - that SDS noticed its composition was an issue then? - but it seems to me it was an issue throughout, and important to understanding SDS' political approach. It wasn't just its composition, but its politics that were middle-class...its attempts to relate to working-class people, like ERAP "community organizing", always smacked of social work. It's confrontationism, super-radical rhetoric, and window-smashing were basically an attempts to appeal to the ruling class by scaring it with the spectre of "civil disorder" - or in other words, "Daddy, notice me!"


SWP too was in a pre-split mentality: after Jack Barnes purged the ortho-Trots left in its ranks, SWP morphed into a coterie for Cuba and Grenada.

Innacurate and irrelevant; God only knows why you're bringing up mid-80s events in a discussion of the Vietnam period. If you think that faction fight was already brewing in the early 70s, you're quite wrong.


I don't know, but did SWP organize, or attempt to organize, labor strikes against the war? I think Sparts claim some credit here.

No, see, the SWP is located on Planet Earth. It has some sense of what the relationship of forces is, and what's possible in a place and time.

It did have a conscious strategy of trying to draw working people into antiwar activity, including unions when possible and individual people otherwise. Relating to economic strikes occurred, especially those which happened in the war industries despite calls for wartime sacrifice, was part of this. The orientation to the ranks of the armed forces was another.

Ultimately, if working-class participating became large enough, political strikes might become possible. More immediately, dissent within the armed forces became a material obstacle to conducting the war. By 1971, the disintegration of the U.S. army in Vietnam had reached the point where it had to be withdrawn from any major ground-combat role. The antiwar movement played a certain role in helping promote opposition to the war in the military, and among young men who were potential soldiers, just as in the rest of society.

The SWP had its eye on those two possibilities from the beginning, with a working-class orientation on who had the social power to stop the war.

I seriously doubt that the Spartacist League have ever led or initiated or even helped spark any action by anyone but themselves. I know they claim credit for leading a massive anti-Klan demonstration or two when really they just placed themselves at the head of a spontaneous outpouring, by being first in line to apply for permits for the best counterdemonstration sites.

[shadows]

Fred Halstead's 'Out Now' is a SWP memoir of his involvement in the antiwar movement of the time, and a defense of SWP's approach, criticized by many as narrowly focused. SWP and CP did not connect the dots; SDS, awkwardly, attempted to do so. The later purges in SWP, though I don't know, were likely connected to the student recruits of the sixties, who were schooled in what some would term revisionist Trotskyism, after the banishment of Robertson/Wohlforth in the early sixties and a reconciliation with the Mandelites.

This is how SDS/WUO participated in the antiwar movement:
"The strategy which flows from this (Lin Piao's 'Long Live the Victory of People's War) is what Che called 'creating two, three, many Vietnams' - to mobilize the struggle so sharply in so many places that the imperialists cannot possibly deal with it all." That is, "The Vietnamese (and the Uruguayans and the Rhodesians (sic)) and the blacks and Third World peoples in this country will continue to set the terms for class struggle in America." (from You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows, 1969)

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
No radical group had a single-issue perspective or activity. The whole "single-issue vs multi-issue" dichotomy is false and serves only to obscure the real questions.

Evasion. The SWP may (or may not) have had a verbal commitment to a "multi-issue" approach -- I never heard, during the period in question (1964-1973), of the SWP doing anything but mobilization for the spring and fall ceremonies.

Of course, we weren't paying much attention to the SWP then...so people shouldn't just take my word for it. :)


SDS, as a national organization, avoided and ignored the biggest issue in world and U.S. politics at the time: Vietnam.

Lie...or at least a deliberate distortion.

Because SDS was uninterested in large, twice a year ceremonial demonstrations against the war, it is false to contend that we "ignored the war".

We thought -- and I still think -- that local actions against the war machine were much more effective in spreading our message.

We preferred to run a military or corporate recruiter (or the ROTC) off the campus, demonstrate against the local appearance of some imperialist lackey, or help kids beat the draft...to the political equivalent of a half-time superbowl show.

We did these kinds of things on hundreds and perhaps even thousands of occasions. (Unlike the SWP, we weren't "keeping score".)

And we also were multi-issue in a practical sense...SDS did attempt community organizing (not very successfully), did attempt to organize and/or support resistance to racism, and even actually attempted to organize university workers...something that others took up after SDS disintegrated and that actually works today. It's also a fact that some workers did approach SDS for assistance in off-campus organizing drives...which we supplied.

The crucial distinction between SDS and most of the "old left" was, I think, our reliance on local initiative. Our conventions were not for the purpose of issuing "marching orders" -- no matter what resolutions might be passed or defeated -- but rather of deciding on a kind of "general political framework" in which things should be done. But what each chapter did was up to them.

And they did, as it turned out, quite a lot. :)


Todd Gitlin, who was an SDS leader at the time, later commented on "our failure of leadership - which was undeniable": "The leadership was already a closed elite, we didn't understand what an antiwar movement would be, we didn't have any feel for it."

I was at the June 1965 SDS Convention in Kewadin, Michigan. Todd Gitlin was not.

Insofar as there was an "SDS leader" at that convention, the logical choice would be Tom Hayden.

The major issue at that convention was the "anti-communist" clause in the SDS constitution; in a blistering attack on bourgeois liberalism and SDS's "parent" group (the League for Industrial Democracy), Hayden proposed its repeal.

An acrimonious debate ensued...lasting some 27 or 28 hours. (!) It was the longest continuous plenary that I have ever attended.

On a roll-call vote (if memory serves me), the clause was repealed by a two-thirds majority plus a little more...and the Austin SDS kids brought out the cases of beer they'd been hoarding for the celebration. :D

I do not ever recall Todd Gitlin as "an SDS leader". I was present once at a meeting where he spoke up a few times. (This might have been in the spring of 1964 in Nashville at the founding conference of the Southern Student Organizing Committee -- what was supposed to be a kind of "white SNCC".)

Guess what? Gitlin was a liberal bourgeois whiner then...just as he is today.


It's good that they recognized the importance of opposing racism - though I'm not sure how much SDS contributed to that struggle in practice - but regardless of what else they did, it was wrong to abandon antiwar activity.

Inspite of writing many pages about SDS which do contain some useful information, Sale never understood SDS...he saw politics much like the SWP sees it -- a place where organizations contend for "supremacy" and where substantive decisions are made "at the top". Like Gitlin, for that matter, it's "leadership" that "really counts".

Do you imagine that a speech by Oglesby (or anyone else) caused SDS chapters to stop whatever they were doing and, like a Leninist party, start doing something else?

That is just crazy; i.e., completely divorced from the reality of how SDS actually functioned.

After Oglesby's speech, SDS went on just like before...except that some chapters did move forward on anti-racist actions. Many SDS chapters continued to make anti-war work their main focus; others were still focusing on student rights vs. the university; some of the larger chapters began to reach out more to the community; and so on.

I don't remember if anyone ever articulated it this way at the time, but I think we saw ourselves in struggle against an entire system on many fronts.

We are guilty of what Gitlin, Sale, Halstead, et.al. accuse us of...not being a liberal, single-issue anti-war movement.

And a damn good thing we weren't! :D

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[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2005, 06:46 PM
Fred Halstead's 'Out Now' is a SWP memoir of his involvement in the antiwar movement of the time, and a defense of SWP's approach, criticized by many as narrowly focused.
Irrelevant, since I didn't quote Halstead's opinions but rather used his book as a source of quotes from others. Nobody's accused him of misquoting I've ever heard of and I gave you the page numbers in Sale's definitive history of SDS if you want to check up on it.

Note that Redstar doesn't dispute the accuracy of the quotes or paraphrases - rather argues those statements were unimportant to the overall reality of SDS.

Since you brought it up, though: Halstead's book is the most complete history of the antiwar movement, thorough and well-documented.

I missed an even better quote last time, from an article by Lee Webb and Paul Booth, published by SDS in late 1965:


Essentially, we think the movement against the war in Vietnam is working on the wrong issue. And that issue is Vietnam. We feel that American foreign policy, and thus the war in Vietnam, is impervious to pressure placed directly on it. Secondly, we feel that the issue of the war in Vietnam cannot involve masses of people here in the United States. Finally, we look with extreme concern on the single-issue orientation of the anti-war protest.
The footnote reads "original mimeographed edition distributed at NCC convention. (Copy in autor's files.) Reprinted in Our Generation, May 1966."

Downright prophetic, huh?


The later purges in SWP, though I don't know,

Yes, exactly. Why some people insist on talking about things they don't anything about....I don't know. Note that it wasn't me who brought up the SWP in this thread.


This is how SDS/WUO participated in the antiwar movement:

By contributing hot air?

[shadows]

Halstead's tome is simply not definitive, though it is informative of a section of the antiwar movement. SDS has received much more attention as of late, with memoirs from WUO veterans as well as RYMII progeny. Such a diverse movement defies simple characterization. SDS/WUO did focus on Vietnam, but their strategy was not that of the single-issue focus SWP and CP of the old left were known and derided for.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2005, 08:09 PM
Evasion. The SWP may (or may not) have had a verbal commitment to a "multi-issue" approach -- I never heard, during the period in question (1964-1973), of the SWP doing anything but mobilization for the spring and fall ceremonies.

Of course, we weren't paying much attention to the SWP then...so people shouldn't just take my word for it. :)
....what was I just saying about people who insist on talking about things they admittedly know nothing about? (And: funny how nobody can ignore the SWP's role in the antiwar movement, retrospectively, huh?)

The years in question are "before my time" but I've seen old issues of the Militant and Young Socialist which are full of articles about other political questions, including SWP and YSA activity around them.

Heck in '64 and '65 Vietnam wasn't even the central SWP focus...that was still civil rights. Later, the SWP's central focus became Vietnam but that was far from all. You don't have to take my word for it: Here's a google search page (http://www.google.com/search?as_q=1995&num=100&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=25+and+50+years+ago&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=themilitant.com&safe=images) of brief Militant items from 1970 ("25 years ago" items from 1995, which is as far back as the web archive goes, so I didn't pick the year in order to improve my point. Anyone can do similar searches for later years.) A lot of stuff other than Vietnam there.

Heck, the SWP didn't always oppose antiwar coalitions being involved in other issues, either. For example, the Student Mobe actively supported the strike against GE (a war industry BTW.) There were probably other cases, whenever the other issue didn't seem likely to weaken the coalition.

The real dispute was: the SWP didn't impose its "multi-issue" communist program on the antiwar movement, and opposed efforts by other radical (or liberal) groups to impose theirs. The SWP thought the antiwar movement should be open to people of disparate views on other questions.

While other tendencies either saw the "single-issue" antiwar committees as competition - a common reaction of SDS chapters - or sought to impose their "multi-issue" program on coalitions they set up or captured. Sometimes radical groups combined to create "multi-issue" coalitions - such as the ROC, NCNP, NCAWRR, and PCPJ - and usually began squabbling immediately over exactly what the "multi-issue" program should be. Such groups rarely did much but argue internally, and were often short-lived.

Which is precisely why the SWP opposed this so-called multi-issueism as destructive of the antiwar movement.


We thought -- and I still think -- that local actions against the war machine were much more effective in spreading our message.

Local actions...like the "ten days of resistance", with tactics to be decided by local chapters, which the SDS National Council called for and then abandoned?

The major "single-issue' antiwar coalitions, local and national, also called local actions, coordinated and otherwise. Typically a lot bigger than anything called by SDS chapters.

Interesting you should state the goal of "spreading our message" - that was precisely the goal of the mass demonstrations you deride, but not of the confrontationist actions favored by ultralefts. Those actions tended and tend to alienate more people than they attract. Their sponsors typically claimed other goals, such as frightening the ruling class with the spectre of social disruption.

And if you acknowledge that as the goal, there's no reason to deride something for being "the political equivalent of a half-time superbowl show." or "ceremonial." Religious ceremonies and yes, the Superbowl, are both undeniably effective at spreading their sponsors' messages.


Our conventions were not for the purpose of issuing "marching orders" -- no matter what resolutions might be passed or defeated -- but rather of deciding on a kind of "general political framework" in which things should be done. But what each chapter did was up to them.

And that "general political framework" was wrong. It was a framework that downplayed active opposition to the war.

It's also pretty rich to call my statement about SDS "as a national organization" a lie...and then change the subject to the local chapter activity.


I do not ever recall Todd Gitlin as "an SDS leader"..... Guess what? Gitlin was a liberal bourgeois whiner then...just as he is today.

Well, you might be right on the latter point...I'm not in the business of defending SDS leaders. Gitlin was, however, SDS president in 63-64 and then coordinator of its Peace Education Project in 94-65, including the period it called the '65 March on Washington (which wasn't his idea, though; he was pushing draft resistance.)....sounds kinda like an SDS leader to me. Maybe if he'd "graduated" by the Kewatin convention I was mistaken in saying he was "then" a SDS leader.

Hayden, since you mention him, was the ultimate example of liberal ultraleftism, trying to reform the system by scaring Daddy. A liberal then just as he is today. Also notable for getting others into confrontations with the police and then bugging out rather than risk his own skull, as at Chicago '68.


Do you imagine that a speech by Oglesby (or anyone else) caused SDS chapters to stop whatever they were doing and, like a Leninist party, start doing something else?

Straw man as I originally said "Of course, many local SDS chapters were involved in antiwar activity. But if you're going to look at the distinctive early SDS ideology, and at SDS as a national organization, you gotta acknowledge that it mostly ignored the war and the antiwar movement."

Many chapters "did their own thing" without national focus. Some, perhaps....well, Halstead comments on the 1967 SDS National Council's decision to call the "ten days of resistance": "Underlying the discussion at the SDS meeting was the fact that SDS locals were following the SMC's lead on antiwar activity because the SDS national office was not providing any national direction or focus on the issue."

But I do imagine that Oglesby and similar national leaders influenced at least some SDS members...and that he was probably at least somewhat reflective of many chapter delegates' views or they wouldn't have elected him and voted for resolutions expressing similar ideas. Also, Sale says Oglesby was expressing the NC's shift of focus. If not just Oglesby, but the whole NC, was completely out of step with the chapters...then so much for SDS' "participatory democracy", huh?

The 1969 disintegration of SDS also shows pretty clearly that what happened on the national level was relevant to the chapters...some may have carried on for a time, but only for a time.

Incidentally, I've heard much the same line of argument (minus your decentralization point, which is true) in defense of the 30s and 40s CP: its national line may have been bad, but many local activists did good work. Which they did, of course, but that doesn't make the national line any better - on the contrary. The truly awful thing about the CP was precisely that it corrupted the best of a generation.

To a far lesser extent, the same can be said of SDS as a national organization: it drew in a lot of good activists, steered them away from the central issue of the time, and in the end led many to demoralization in the aftermath of its '69 collapse.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
And: funny how nobody can ignore the SWP's role in the antiwar movement, retrospectively, huh?

Beats me. I ignore it...cheerfully. The only time I ever went to one of those D.C. rituals was because my ride to New York City insisted on stopping there. It was fairly warm, so I slept through the speeches. :)


The real dispute was: the SWP didn't impose its "multi-issue" communist program on the antiwar movement...

No, I agree, it did not do that. It was a grand coalition of nice people who wanted to feel good about themselves twice a year.

*yawns*


Local actions...like the "ten days of resistance", with tactics to be decided by local chapters, which the SDS National Council called for and then abandoned?

Actually, I don't remember this particular sequence of events (there was much going on then)...but "off the top of my head", the action could have been abandoned because of a negative reaction from the chapters to the idea that the National Council should do stuff like that.

"Top down" was...unpopular in SDS.


The major "single-issue" antiwar coalitions, local and national, also called local actions, coordinated and otherwise. Typically a lot bigger than anything called by SDS chapters.

I saw nothing of this at all nor do I remember reading about it. Perhaps something like that may have happened in New York City or San Francisco...


Interesting you should state the goal of "spreading our message" - that was precisely the goal of the mass demonstrations you deride, but not of the confrontationist actions favored by ultralefts.

Clearly mistaken. You were trying to spread a liberal message...stop the war and everything will be fine. Didn't you even have a slogan about "Negotiations Now" or something like that? Or was that the "Communist" Party?

We were trying to spread a radical message...down with U.S. imperialism -- U.S. Get Out Now.

Naturally our tactics were different.


Those actions tended and tend to alienate more people than they attract.

No way to objectively measure that...except to note that SDS was a hell of a lot bigger than the SWP. We didn't "alienate everybody". :lol:


And that "general political framework" was wrong. It was a framework that downplayed active opposition to the war.

And "up-played" opposition to the whole system.


It's also pretty rich to call my statement about SDS "as a national organization" a lie...and then change the subject to the local chapter activity.

Yes, I shouldn't have said "lie" or even "deliberate distortion". Since you weren't there yourself, you'd have no way of understanding that the "national organization" was the least important part of SDS.

Indeed, I probably couldn't even fairly criticize Halstead either...he no more understood SDS than you do.

You think within a paradigm (Leninism) where the "national organization" is "primary" and the local organizations are relatively unimportant -- that's how Leninism works.

An organization that works completely opposite to this formula seems so "crazy" to you that you can't help yourself treating it "as if" it "did" work in the ways you are accustomed to thinking that organizations work.

It's probably small comfort to you, but I've had the same problem communicating this to the Maoists in the RCP...they just can't help assuming that if there were no public "great leaders" of SDS then there must have been "private" ones. Because you "can't have" an organization without well-entrenched "leadership".


Gitlin was, however, SDS president in 63-64 and then coordinator of its Peace [Research and] Education Project in 64-65, including the period it called the '65 March on Washington (which wasn't his idea, though; he was pushing draft resistance.)....sounds kinda like an SDS leader to me.

Yes, you are correct here. SDS was still very small then -- it did not "take off" until after the 1965 Washington demonstration. I was present at the December 1964 NC (in New York) but I do not remember now who argued for the demonstration or even if there was any significant opposition to the idea. What I do remember is that someone said "if we work really hard at this, we might actually get one or two thousand kids to come". The actual turnout (15-25,000) shocked the hell out of us.


Hayden, since you mention him, was the ultimate example of liberal ultraleftism...

Most unjust. Hayden became a bourgeois liberal...but in 1965, he was not. As I noted, he blasted the League for Industrial Democracy at the 1965 convention. In fact, I was astounded to learn that he actually spoke at an anti-war demonstration organized by Progressive Labor (of all people) in the fall of 1965...hardly the act of a "liberal".

Gitlin, on the other hand, was never anything but a bourgeois liberal.


Underlying the discussion at the SDS meeting was the fact that SDS locals were following the SMC's lead on antiwar activity because the SDS national office was not providing any national direction or focus on the issue.

Completely speculative and obviously self-serving. The general opinion of the SMC in SDS was not any different, to the best of my knowledge, than our opinion of the "Mobe" itself...irrelevant.


If not just Oglesby, but the whole NC, was completely out of step with the chapters...then so much for SDS' "participatory democracy", huh?

Well, I explained what happened...but I can see we still have "paradigm problems" here. You assume that if the NC passed a resolution and many chapters just ignored it, that means "participatory democracy doesn't work".

On the contrary, that's how it does work. Initiative comes from the bottom, not the top. Yes, the arguments raised around a successful resolution at the NC or the Convention would certainly predispose a particular chapter to consider its possible implementation on a local level.

But that resolution was a recommendation...not a command.


The 1969 disintegration of SDS also shows pretty clearly that what happened on the national level was relevant to the chapters...some may have carried on for a time, but only for a time.

Yes, it was pretty demoralizing for most of us...some local groups with good stuff going just reformed as independent local groups, but a lot of folks just drifted away.

What the big national meetings of SDS mostly provided, I think, was a constant reinforcement of our morale...we were "part of something big" even if, for the moment, things weren't going so great for us locally.

Going to one of those national meetings and intensively arguing politics, exchanging tales of success and failure, etc., for 3 to 6 days was an energizer...it "got the juices flowing again".

And we had those big national meetings four times a year...so we could keep getting "re-charged".

When SDS disintegrated, I think we missed that more than anything else.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[shadows]

Seems the SWP was (is) a bit touchy about the past. It did open up to new recruits, and many of these assisted the re-focusing of SWP from its Trotskyist (though tenuously) past to its current incarnation as Castro enthusiasts. Elbaum writes: "The SWP and its youth organization, the Young Socialist Alliance, grew substantially during the 1960s and early 1970s, like the CP recruiting a layer of talented activists. But in contrast to the CPUSA, the influx of sixties militants qualitatively changed the SWP's character, with individuals from the new generation given central leadership posts by the late 1960s and fully taking the reins of power in the 1970s." (Revolution in the Air, p.51) He continues, concerning SWP's behavior in the antiwar movement: "...the SWP's tactics in the antiwar movement included a number of costly negatives: Its insistence on single-issue demonstrations contrasted with efforts to explicitly link antiracist demands to antiwar activities, and the SWP rebuffed all initiatives aimed at cohering any kind of radical, anti-imperialist current outside the SWP itself; this latter stance translated especially into a marked antipathy to SDS." (ibid., pp. 51-52) Ron Jacobs, in The Way the Wind Blew, writes of an article in Ramparts, circa 1968, that SDS tried to move beyond "'the point it became necessary to define and confront the institutions of American aggression in Vietnam - to the point when it became necessary to start building a movement which could take over those institutions. Earlier demonstrations had enabled (the movement) to show our strength, but did not give us the forms to use that strength." (p. 4) That SDS involved many in the effort to build a new society, one that would not wage war on the Vietnamese or others, is undeniable. That it failed, this too is undeniable. But SWP did not attempt this, not overtly. PL, RYMII, the Panthers, all were visible and gave hope to those of us who were sickened by this war, and by the logic that brought it about. In my suburban high school, all these groups were active, even at a nearby Navy base, among new recruits. I did not learn of the SWP, whose paper the Militant I read throughout the early seventies to mid-eighties, until the big demo in Minneapolis-St. Paul in (I think) 1971. Its 'militant' actions were safe, unlike those of the other groups. Militancy for SWP translated into Democrats of dove-ish inclination speaking against Nixon, and parades demanding 'out now.' Wasn't this around the time people from Antioch, like Barnes, gained prominence in the SWP, or began to do so?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2005, 01:07 AM
Beats me. I ignore it...cheerfully.
The heck you do. This was your post before I ever appeared in this thread: "I agree completely. In SDS circles, the SWP's ritual spring and fall demonstrations were regarded as ceremonies, not protests. It looks like the present anti-war movement in the U.S. is still "stuck" in the same position."

So there you are, in a thread on SDS, compelled to discuss the SWP. Because you have to recognize - and choose to exagerate - the SWP's role in the largest antiwar demonstrations. Also Shadow, to an even greater degree.


Clearly mistaken. You were trying to spread a liberal message...stop the war and everything will be fine.

BS. What exactly is liberal about immediate withdrawal from Vietnam? On the contrary, the SWP proposed antiwar coalitions adopt demands for Vietnamese self-determination and opposition to all outside interference, which were objectively anti-imperialist.

"Get out now" was the most revolutionary possible position on the Vietnam War, and the SWP was the most consistent advocate of that position. Certainly more consistent than SDS.

At the '65 March, for example, SDS bent to pressure from the "adult" social-democrats, printed up a range of signs and asked groups not to bring their own...the YSA has asked for and at one point been promised some kind of "out now" signs...but they had to settle for "Self-determination, not U.S.-imposed dictatorship."

More consistant than the NLF flag-wavers, for that matter, many of whom did in fact adopt a negotiations position toward the end of the war...adopting Hanoi's negotiating position at the time. "Sign the 17-point agreement" or something like that. Since Hanoi's negotiating position necessarily included concessions extracted at gunpoint, this was a far more equivocal demand than immediate withdrawal.

Neither SDS nor other ultralefts acted as if program or message was of central imporance...rather the tactic, the confrontation itself was central. On tactics, the SWP was often closer to the liberals and other "moderate groups...but on program, the SWP was the farthest.

Hindsight seems to be at work here: because everyone now accepts immediate withdrawal - from Vietnam, anyway - they forget how long the SWP and others had to fight for it. And how many vacillated over it.

Your ignorance is understandable (although not your insistance on making proclamations about things you know nothing about): SDS was largely absent from the antiwar gatherings where the SWP and others were fighting it out with the CP and others over demands and program. SDS abstained from that fight, just as its national leadership mostly abstained from the fight against the war. So how could you know about it?

Similarly, we all know in hindsight that the Vietnam War was the central issue in politics at the time; but that wasn't obvious to everyone at the time - certainly not in advance.


No way to objectively measure that...except to note that SDS was a hell of a lot bigger than the SWP. We didn't "alienate everybody". :lol:

Sure there is: size of the demonstrations. Compare the famous liberal ultraleft Chicago Democratic Convention demonstration, for example, to the much larger demonstration called by the Chicago Peace Council a month or so later. (That is the point I was making - legality vs confrontation, not SWP vs SDS)

As for size of the organizations, SDS at one point was much larger than the SWP, sure....but that didn't last, did it? SDS was shattered by the test of war, while the SWP grew greatly - more than any other radical group, in fact.


And "up-played" opposition to the whole system.

So did the SWP, including SWP spokespeople at coalition demonstrations. That, I've even seen on film. It's just that the SWP didn't try to impose that on the coalition. Are you saying the SWP should've? So much for the big anti-authoritarian, huh? Or, if not, what is the criticism really?


Yes, I shouldn't have said "lie" or even "deliberate distortion". Since you weren't there yourself, you'd have no way of understanding that the "national organization" was the least important part of SDS.

Bubba, you shouldn't have said it was false at all. Since you haven't even attempted to show that my statements about the national organization were false, but only changed the subject to the local chapters.

And yes, I understand that SDS was a decentralized organization. Heck, I said in my first post on the subject that many chapters took actions contrary to the national organization's position. I just don't see why that makes the national organization wholly irrelevant.


Most unjust. Hayden became a bourgeois liberal...but in 1965, he was not. As I noted, he blasted the League for Industrial Democracy at the 1965 convention. In fact, I was astounded to learn that he actually spoke at an anti-war demonstration organized by Progressive Labor (of all people) in the fall of 1965...hardly the act of a "liberal".

How not? It depends on what he said and did, not where he says it. And there can be disagreements among liberals and social democrats.

To give one example, Hayden saw all the confrontation at the Chicago Democratic Convention as a way of helping McCarthy. Heh. As if. According to Sam Brown of McCarthy's staff: "Hayden suggested....that if McCarthy appeared to have a good chance by Monday or Tuesday - and if that chance might be hampered by public activity - then we could meet to decide whether to go ahead with the public activity." Washington Post of January 22, 1970, quoted on p. 407 of Halstead's book.


Well, I explained what happened...but I can see we still have "paradigm problems" here. You assume that if the NC passed a resolution and many chapters just ignored it, that means "participatory democracy doesn't work".

Well, I explained what I meant, but I can see we have reading comprehension problems here. If a resolution doesn't reflect what most chapters ALREADY THINK, if the chapters cannot elect leaders who REFLECT THEIR THINKING, then that's not a very democratic organization.


Yes, the arguments raised around a successful resolution at the NC or the Convention would certainly predispose a particular chapter to consider its possible implementation on a local level.

So to the degree that chapters took action around Vietnam, it was despite not because of their affiliation to national SDS.

Really, after reading your arguments, I gotta wonder why have a national organization at all. Just throw the occasional national get-together.


I saw nothing of this at all nor do I remember reading about it. Perhaps something like that may have happened in New York City or San Francisco...

What? You don't know about large local antiwar demonstrations? Or about "international days of protest" with actions in local areas? What hole did you spend those years hiding in, some teensy college town?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2005, 02:15 AM
Seems the SWP was (is) a bit touchy about the past.
No, the SWP is justifiably proud of its past - you know another radical publication that has a "25 and 50 years ago" column in every issue? You know another party that's brought out a history of the movement against the Vietnam War? (Heck, anybody at all that's brought out a history as thorough and broad as Halstead's.)

I (*taps shadow on elbow* hello? I'm right here) am "touchy" about people who are aggressively, stubbornly, admittedly ignorant, refuse to listen, and keep repeating themselves like broken records.

[Severian]

Oh, as long as Shadow's quoting opinions of the SWP held by its adversaries, I've got a better one: syndicated columnists Evans and Novak. (As in Robert Novak "douchebag of liberty" as the Daily Show calls him; Evans is dead or retired.)

"What makes all this significant is that the Trotskyists are not the few bedraggled malcontents of a generation ago but the most dynamic, most effective organization on the American far left." Can't find the full text...there's an even better one from J. Edgar Hoover but I can't find that right now...

But hey, looking around, I found some good stuff. Looks like Nixon or at least Haldeman understood, far better than y'all, that the SWP and YSA did indeed have a broader revolutionary approach, which its central focus on Vietnam served:


Haldeman: They make the point that, that, uh, these, the people th-, he dictated the history of who put this demonstration together, that it's the Young Socialist Alliance which is the, has replaced the SDS as the radical organization now, that they are unde the Socialist Workers’ Party, an undeviating [unintelligible] line, that they admit they're using, only using the war as a device, and, uh, goes through the whole, whole [unintelligible] of the antiwar movement [unintelligible]. [Unintelligible] they think it is to have two world capitals. They say they want more than just peace in Vietnam. Their literature describes the Communist aggression in Vietnam as the Vietnamese revolution and heaps praise on it. And they pick 'em. They pick whosever organized this demonstration, the liberals, and the, the result is what would have been unimaginable a few years ago: hundreds of thousands of Americans marching in the Capital under Trotskyist command. This, in this town, is gonna bother some people
....
President: Yeah. I undersatnd. Bu-but what I sh-should say, though, that, knowing the House and Senate, the way [unintelligible] take that and have people s-see about that today. Circulate that to every member of the House and Senate. So the word is [unintelligible] Evans and Novak, from these liberal [sic! heh -S] columnists, it's very interesting from this source [unintelligible]. Have one of our girls mail it out.www.ssa.gov/history/Nixon/trn482-8.rtf+%22Muskie+and+the+Trotskyites%22&hl=en]from (http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:2IhAjkQnZ8kJ:[url) the oval office tapes[/url]

I should comment that this is one of many conversations mapping out a gameplan for undermining this "political equivalent of a Superbowl halftime show" which apparently they did not find so unthreatening or ineffective.

And it looks like the FBI, in carrying out its general assignment of trying to deepen every kind of factional squabble on the left, found attitudes like y'alls fairly useful:

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/doc59.gif

Or this bit of black propaganda, (http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/blackstock137.jpg) where the FBI accuses the SWP et al of unwillingness of fight the "pigs"....

And we see from
this internal memo (http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/sacatlanta21jan1970.htm) that the FBI found it cause for concern when a SDS splitoff became more favorable towards working with the SWP and others to organize...what are they called...."sterile peace crawls". Apparently the imperialists failed to realize how unthreatening such actions were to imperialism.

[redstar2000]

I will try here to reconstruct at least one of the two posts I made that were lost in the server crash.
-------------------------------------------------------


Originally posted by Severian
What exactly is liberal about immediate withdrawal from Vietnam? On the contrary, the SWP proposed antiwar coalitions adopt demands for Vietnamese self-determination and opposition to all outside interference, which were objectively anti-imperialist.

I don't dispute that the demand for immediate withdrawal was not objectively anti-imperialist.

What I remember about the ceremonial demonstrations that the SWP/Mobe sponsored was that the enemy -- U.S. imperialism -- was not named and, further, that the speakers at those rituals were by no means unanimous even on the point of immediate withdrawal.

It may be a subtle distinction -- was not your slogan "Bring the Troops Home Now"?

Ours was "No Negotiations -- U.S. Get Out Now!"

And even, "Victory to the NLF!"

In my opinion, that represented a whole difference in political attitude...the SWP/Mobe projected an "accommodating" image while SDS, even verbally, was far more confrontational.


Neither SDS nor other ultralefts acted as if program or message was of central importance...rather the tactic, the confrontation itself was central.

Well...yes, that was very often the case.

Why?

Because we saw in all the "old left" (including the SWP) an attitude of real acceptance of capitalism...regardless of their "nominal program" or "message".

We did not think it was enough to just "formulate correct programs".

Imagine what we would have said had we had Marx's own words to hand...something like "a real step forward in the movement is worth a hundred programs", if I recall.


Sure there is: size of the demonstrations.

I said it before and I'll say it again: that's just bizarre.


Compare the famous liberal ultraleft Chicago Democratic Convention demonstration, for example, to the much larger demonstration called by the Chicago Peace Council a month or so later.

The 1968 demonstration at the Democratic National Convention was not an "SDS project". The chapters as a whole seemed quite cool to the idea, as I recall -- though people from some chapters in or near Chicago may have participated.

We regarded the whole "get clean for Gene" campaign as liberal nonsense. The police attacks on the demonstrators there were not attacks on "ultra-leftists" but on liberals.

Why else the media "outrage"?

We in SDS did benefit from those attacks, however. When chapters held their first meetings that fall, the numbers attending exploded. Chapters with only 5 or 10 members reported 50 or 100 newly radicalized students showing up. Somebody told me that the Harvard-Radcliffe chapter jumped to over 600 members.

Oh, and I never heard of the "Chicago Peace Council" until you just mentioned it. Did they ever do anything? Besides march, I mean.


SDS was shattered by the test of war...

No, we were shattered by a foolish infatuation with Leninism-Maoism.


To give one example, Hayden saw all the confrontation at the Chicago Democratic Convention as a way of helping McCarthy.

By 1968, Hayden had completely withdrawn from SDS and was indeed a bourgeois liberal.


So to the degree that chapters took action around Vietnam, it was despite not because of their affiliation to national SDS.

That is an odd way to phrase it; action against the war was not considered "defiance" of the national organization.

We looked for many ways to confront the system on many issues...but anti-war work certainly played a major role on many campuses, directly or indirectly.

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2005, 08:26 PM

It may be a subtle distinction -- was not your slogan "Bring the Troops Home Now"?

Ours was "No Negotiations -- U.S. Get Out Now!

And even, "Victory to the NLF!"


(I also lost a post.)

Those slogans say the same thing, only in more radical-sounding words.

There's more to being a revolutionary than rhetoric. Heck, if your goal is to win working people to a revolutionary position, not scare the ruling class with how oh-so-radical you are, you likely will often be looking for a way to express the most revolutionary ideas in the most moderate and reasonable-seeming way.

As, indeed, the idea of revolution is the most reasonable of ideas in the modern world.

Of course speakers at Mobe-sponsored demonstrations were not unanimous; it was a coalition, not a SWP front as you seem to think. Dellinger and others often had more influence in setting the program and tactics of Mobe and New Mobe. In some cases, the SWP supported demonstrations which were mostly liberal-sponsored, like the Moratorium, welcoming the element of debate involved in speaking on the same platform as the negotiations or "set the date" advocates. Halstead quotes one liberal student's reaction to hearing a SWP representative speak at one of these rallies; I may post it later.

Only NPAC, later, was fully based on the so-called SWP line (a misnomer 'cause many others agreed on immediate withdrawal, legal demonstrations, decison-making at open conferences, and nonexclusion). But by '66 or '67, IIRC, the coalitions themselves were calling for immediate withdrawal.

In any case, you gotta join the fight to bring the mass movement around to a better position, regardless of how far it is from that position at the moment.



Sure there is: size of the demonstrations.

I said it before and I'll say it again: that's just bizarre.

What? Have you forgotten the question? Apparently, since you're talking as if it was SDS vs SWP, not legal demonstrations vs ultraleft confrontations.

If you want to measure which tactic attracts people, and which repels them...measure how many people are willing to join in using those tactics.

I might comment as well that confrontationists typically appeal to those already radicalized, and perhaps jaded by attending repeated demonstrations without getting a quick capitulation from the warmakers. While legal demonstrations draw in new forces, including bringing in working people to a movement that was initially student and middle-class.



Oh, and I never heard of the "Chicago Peace Council" until you just mentioned it. Did they ever do anything? Besides march, I mean.

What, I thought local actions were more effective in spreading the message? Apparently you couldn't be bothered to notice those either.

Ignorance is not a virtue.

If we're to take you as a typical member, SDS not only stood aside from the fight against the war, but barely noticed the largest and most important actions.

This is not a serious attitude for a political activist, to ignore the largest actions taking place and know so little about them.

Note that I don't ignore SDS, or refuse to know anything about it, even though its actions were typically much smaller.


By 1968, Hayden had completely withdrawn from SDS and was indeed a bourgeois liberal.

By '68, he'd graduated from a student organization, like many other leaders of SDS eventually did. I know of no evidence that he'd moved right politically over this period and you've given none.


That is an odd way to phrase it; action against the war was not considered "defiance" of the national organization.

But its influence was in the other direction.

Hey, in one of your lost posts you mentioned seeing one of those anonymous FBI leaflets when it came out, and laughing...did you laugh because you saw through it, or because you liked it?

[flyby]

Obviously generalizations have their flaws, and their exceptions.

But in general, in the 60s the most radical and revolutionary and militant forces among the student movement hooked up with SDS. And the forces who were attracted to YSA (i.e. the SWP) were more inclinded to seeing large mass single issue demos as the be-all-and-end-all (and were generally from the "soft left" part of the upsurge) -- they were also more inclined toward seeing elections (and SWP candidates) as a viable channel for their political outlet.

At the time, i simply thought of them as reformists (not much different from the CPUSA, except that the CP wanted "multi-issue" pressure movements, and the SWP was singleminded on a "single issue" antiwar movement.)

In many ways, there were forces in U.S. society that were not willing to be in the same coalition with the CP (since it had ties to the Vietnamese "enemy") and so there was a big "space" for a coalition that was free of the CP taint. And the SWP organized that... in its NPAC formations (acting basically as the "left" organizaitonal arm of more middle-of-the-road trade unions and "peace groups.")

Though SDS did not directly organize mass mobilizations (after the ground breaking march on the pentagon) -- members of SDS were highly active "on the ground" and were on most campuses the backbone of the teachins, activities, and organizing. Though in an upsure like that, so much is happening, that it is hard to characterize.

SDS was also grappling heavilywith how the struggle against imperialism (internatinalism) could and should be combined with a revolutionary challenge to the U.S. (internally) and especially how to support and defend the Black Liberation struggle. This went against (and in fact rejected) a "single issue approach" -- which precisely rejected, and opposed such efforts to "raise the level" of the struggle and the conscousness of people.

The SWP opposed allowing supporters of the NLF (the revolutionary forces in Vietnam) from speaking from thepodiums -- or even participating as contingents, when they could get away with it. More than once, radical forces had to fight their way through the SWP's "marshals" to get to the podium, or even to get into the crowd. (The famous spring actions of 1968 in NYC was a big example, where the massive "Coalition for an Anti-Imperialistt MOvement" contingent fought the police across manhattan to get to central park, with revolutionary and red flags flying, and then had to fight the SWP forcesfor a chance to speak or even join the mass rally in central park.

There were important political line differences, different verdicts and different strategic conceptions behind all of this. And it is worth thinking through what they were, and what we can learn from them.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
There's more to being a revolutionary than rhetoric. Heck, if your goal is to win working people to a revolutionary position, not scare the ruling class with how oh-so-radical you are, you likely will often be looking for a way to express the most revolutionary ideas in the most moderate and reasonable-seeming way.

Our goal was not to "scare the ruling class" -- a nonsensical objective -- but to express in plain words our hatred of U.S. imperialism.

If anything, it was the Black Panther Party that projected the "don't fuck with us because we're really bad" attitude during the 1960s.

True, the people in RYM I (eventually the Weather Underground) did try that approach in the "days of rage"...and got their asses kicked. But this was in October of 1969 (as I recall)...and they were only one of the remnants of SDS at that point.

I certainly believe it is possible to express communist ideas in a reasonable way...but I don't think there's any way to make those ideas "seem moderate".

They're not.


In any case, you gotta join the fight to bring the mass movement around to a better position, regardless of how far it is from that position at the moment.

I know this will sound "terrible" to some...but, you see, in our own eyes, we (and our constituency) were "the mass movement".

We didn't think of all those people who went to those big ceremonies every spring and fall as "part of the movement" at all.

We considered them "just bourgeois liberals" doing bourgeois liberal things.


If you want to measure which tactic attracts people, and which repels them...measure how many people are willing to join in using those tactics.

But we were not interested in attracting "just people" as an abstraction; we wanted to attract people willing to confront imperialism.


While legal demonstrations draw in new forces, including bringing in working people to a movement that was initially student and middle-class.

That may or may not be true.

SDS chapters at elite private universities tended to be middle-class or even higher; at state universities in the mid-west, south and west, many more working class kids were members. The largest SDS chapter on the west coast, for example, was not UC-Berkeley but (I'm pretty sure) San Francisco State...a working class college.

And by 1969 at the latest, there were a few cases when workers approached us for assistance in organizing drives and contract disputes.

In fact, it's interesting how SDS's confrontational "rep" lasted longer than SDS itself. There was a case in 1970 or 71 (I forget which). A Teamster's local was having contract difficulties with the City Sanitation Department. Someone was kind enough to clip and send me the front page of the evening paper there -- with a blazing headline across the top: Teamsters threaten to call in SDS.

I'll always wonder what might have been.


If we're to take you as a typical member, SDS not only stood aside from the fight against the war, but barely noticed the largest and most important actions.

Well, I don't know how "typical" I was, of course. But I do know that most of us did not consider the ceremonial demonstrations to be "the most important actions"...or even particularly important at all.


Note that I don't ignore SDS, or refuse to know anything about it, even though its actions were typically much smaller.

"You had to be there", as the saying goes. We were focused on confronting the system...and naturally we didn't have time or motivation to pay much attention to those who weren't.


I know of no evidence that he'd [Hayden] moved right politically over this period and you've given none.

No, you did. In 1965, Hayden was attacking bourgeois liberalism (the League for Industrial Democracy) as corrupt and manipulative -- this I heard with my own ears at Kewadin. You quoted a source suggesting that he was attempting to promote Gene McCarthy's campaign in 1968...ergo he moved right.

Not that it's a big deal...we both agree that he had nothing to do with SDS by that time anyway.


Hey, in one of your lost posts you mentioned seeing one of those anonymous FBI leaflets when it came out, and laughing...did you laugh because you saw through it, or because you liked it?

Ah yes, the goose-fucker leaflet. What made it funny to us was the tone of "high indignation" at something that everybody already knew and didn't care anything about.

Imagine...we were "supposed" to be really "pissed off" and "join the struggle" to "break the SWP chains" and "liberate the MOBE".

As people say now: ROFLMAO!

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[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 05:03 PM
The SWP opposed allowing supporters of the NLF (the revolutionary forces in Vietnam) from speaking from thepodiums -- or even participating as contingents, when they could get away with it. More than once, radical forces had to fight their way through the SWP's "marshals" to get to the podium, or even to get into the crowd. (The famous spring actions of 1968 in NYC was a big example, where the massive "Coalition for an Anti-Imperialistt MOvement" contingent fought the police across manhattan to get to central park, with revolutionary and red flags flying, and then had to fight the SWP forcesfor a chance to speak or even join the mass rally in central park.
Heh. That's twisted. A beautiful example of the Stalinist "big lie" technique in action.

When a group decides to "fight its way on to the podium", obviously that's a thug attack on the demonstration. The organizers of a demonstration have the right to decide who to invite. If the NLF flag-wavers had actually been part of the coalition, and helping to build the demonstrations, probably they woulda been.

And you betcha, the SWP wasn't shy about organizing marshals to defend demonstrations from thug attacks. Or antiwar conferences, or the meetings of left groups...as two splinters of SDS, Progressive Labor's and LaRouche's, found out the hard way.

There's no reason to distinguish between "left" thug attacks on the movement, and fascist or other rightist thug attacks. Getting hit upside the head with a club feels about the same way regardless of how the thug rationalizes it. And one kind of thug can become the other, as the LaRouche example shows.

As for "fighting your way into the demonstration", in cases where confrontationists are trying to force the whole crowd into their staged showdown with the cops, you betcha its the job of marshals to keep 'em separated.

This is a perfect example of something I described in one of my lost posts: the confrontationists realized pretty quickly they couldn't get that many people to volunteer for their adventures. And, as Redstar describes, they usually got stomped by the cops pretty quickly on their own.

So they began looking for ways to force other people into their games. Because, basically, they see most people as sheep to be herded anyway.

The tactic Flyby describes (starting a fight with the cops, then running to hide behind other demonstrators) was one of the favored means of doing so. And probably still is; I know I saw it done by anarchists in the 80s - and had to dodge the cops afterwards. Fortunately we don't have a lot of ultralefts in this burg where I live now.

(He's probably confused about when it happened, though; there's no mention of such an attack on the demonstration in Halstead's account of the April '68 NY march, or of Co-Aim other than the the 1969 Counterinaugural (Jan, DC, natch) - where they forcibly took over New Mobe's office. Not just thuggish, but for some reason under the impression that a demonstration can be controlled out of an office.)

There is a mention of PL taking over the stage at a Moratorium rally, April 1970, NYC.....in May 1970, also NYC, a march was attacked by pro-war construction workers....nuthin' else for the major NYC demonstrations. So which of those is closest to yer heroic anti-imperialist action, Flyby? Hey, why not support 'em both? They both cracked "reformists" heads the same.

Or maybe you got the city wrong, too?

Incidentally, the SDS march was from the White House to the Washington Monument, not the Pentagon. The October '67 Pentagon march you may be thinking of was organized by.....the much maligned "Mobe". The site was Jerry Rubin's idea - he was prominent on the Mobe's staff at the time.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 08:54 PM
Our goal was not to "scare the ruling class" -- a nonsensical objective -- but to express in plain words our hatred of U.S. imperialism.
It's an argument I've heard any number of ultralefts use....and which you seemed to be using in this post, (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=32686&st=20&#entry500277) to explain how Hitler coulda been stopped no less

More fun with rhetoric:

"We demand that our government meet immediately with the National Liberation Front to assure an end to the war - Now!"

That's from a 1966 Communist Party leaflet. Emphasis in original. Seems to me that still a negotiations demand, regardless of how it's phrased.

Yup, even if they'd said:

"We demand the usurper Johnson, head of the vile, illegitimate imperialist regime, immediately open negotiations with the heroic NLF, the sole true representatives of the oppressed people of Vietnam - or else!"

"Or else what?"

"Or else...um...or else we will eat his firstborn child, fried with onions!"

That wouldn't make them even the teensiest bit more revolutionary. Just better at hiding their true political character.

For that matter, when Rennie Davis and the May Day Collective threatened to shut down Washington unless Uncle Sam signed the People's Peace Treaty - even when they made a pretty serious try at carrying out that threat....that was still a negotiations demand.

Content over form.


I know this will sound "terrible" to some...but, you see, in our own eyes, we (and our constituency) were "the mass movement".

So you had trouble counting. That's not so terrible, and can probably be fixed by watching Sesame Street for a while. But it does sound a tiny bit like what you're always accusing "vanguardists" of. Maybe you've been projecting a little in all those threads on Leninism?


And by 1969 at the latest, there were a few cases when workers approached us for assistance in organizing drives and contract disputes.

And was SDS of any help?

During '69-70 the SMC actually was involved in aiding the General Electric strike.

And of course, a number of unions endorsed, and a fair number of union members participated in, antiwar demonstrations.


What made it funny to us was the tone of "high indignation" at something that everybody already knew and didn't care anything about.


Gotcha. The FBI missed its target audience, there, I guess, since SDS wasn't part of the Mobe.

Contrary to your impression that control of NMC was a "done deal", there was, in fact, a fight going on, which eventually led to the effective explusion of the SWP, and to New Mobe becoming the property of one tendency (Dellinger/"the Conspiracy") rather than a coalition. It withered and died quickly, of course; "capturing" a coaliton is a fool's game.

There followed the split of the antiwar movement into "out now" NPAC and "multi-issue" PCPJ.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
This is a perfect example of something I described in one of my lost posts: the confrontationists realized pretty quickly they couldn't get that many people to volunteer for their adventures. And, as Redstar describes, they usually got stomped by the cops pretty quickly on their own.

So they began looking for ways to force other people into their games. Because, basically, they see most people as sheep to be herded anyway.

This behavior does not describe any SDS action that I ever took part in or even heard about.

It is true, certainly, that the dynamics of confrontational tactics often result in people taking a more active role than they originally anticipated; the sight of police brutality sometimes makes people very angry and they fight back in a vigorous way.

99.99% of the SDS actions that I participated in involved minimal violence (some pushing and shoving) or no violence at all. In fact, it seemed to me on some occasions that the authorities were slightly "apprehensive" when we showed up and "did not want to provoke us" unnecessarily.

And I never heard of SDS having to "fight its way into" a demonstration of any kind.


"We demand that our government meet immediately with the National Liberation Front to assure an end to the war - Now!"

That's from a 1966 Communist Party leaflet. Emphasis in original. Seems to me that's still a negotiations demand, regardless of how it's phrased.

Why do you quote this? SDS was not responsible for the old CPUSA's liberal babble.

I remember, in fact, one occasion when a hapless young woman spoke during the course of a debate at an SDS national meeting (sometime in 1968) and began by announcing that she was from the DuBois Club and the CPUSA...the delegates roared with laughter before she could say another word.

If we paid very little attention to the SWP/Mobe, we paid none at all to the CPUSA.


And was SDS of any help?

I honestly do not know.


And of course, a number of unions endorsed, and a fair number of union members participated in, antiwar demonstrations.

Undoubtedly true...and in great contrast to SDS actions. I think that if SDS had successfully met and overcome the Leninist-Maoist challenge, we would have developed a distinct working class constituency -- a "Movement for a Democratic Society" (Cleveland and New Orleans actually had chapters named that). But the chance was lost. :(

(Interestingly enough, in the early to mid-1970s there was a brief movement to publish underground newspapers directed explicitly to a working class audience; a lot of former SDSers took part in this, including me).


The FBI missed its target audience, there, I guess, since SDS wasn't part of the Mobe.

I never made a close study of COINTELPRO, but, from time to time, we did take notice of what government sources said publicly about SDS and the left...and it was astoundingly inaccurate. People were identified as "key figures" who weren't; organizations were identified as "allies" who hated each other, etc. Was the FBI, etc., lying or were they so inept that they could just never get the details right?

I've often suspected the latter.

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[Severian]

Originally posted by redstar2000+Feb 24 2005, 08:46 AM--> (redstar2000 @ Feb 24 2005, 08:46 AM)
Severian
This is a perfect example of something I described in one of my lost posts: the confrontationists realized pretty quickly they couldn't get that many people to volunteer for their adventures. And, as Redstar describes, they usually got stomped by the cops pretty quickly on their own.

So they began looking for ways to force other people into their games. Because, basically, they see most people as sheep to be herded anyway.

This behavior does not describe any SDS action that I ever took part in or even heard about. [/b]
Since you bring it up, SDS did do something similar at the anti-Rusk demonstration (Nov. 1967) you mentioned earlier. The demonstration was mainly organized by the New York Parade Committe as a legal action, with permits, and the SDS National Office organized forays into the street, giving the cops an excuse to attack the whole demonstration.

Not nearly as rotten as the conscious maneuvers to the same effect carried out by Co-Aim and similar groups, though.


Why do you quote this? SDS was not responsible for the old CPUSA's liberal babble.

To illustrate that rhetoric does not make a position more revolutionary.

Yeah, from what I've seen Cointelpro was often pretty sloppy. Even "sophomoric" as the judge in one anti-FBI lawsuit said. It did cause some real harm though, especially when they happened to hit some pre-existing division.

[flyby]

hmmmm. I will try to be constructive here. And so I won't respond to the tone or slanders from severian (or at least i won't respond by adopting the SAME tone.)

Severian writes: "That's twisted. A beautiful example of the Stalinist "big lie" technique in action."

Then he deduces without knowing: "When a group decides to "fight its way on to the podium", obviously that's a thug attack on the demonstration. The organizers of a demonstration have the right to decide who to invite. If the NLF flag-wavers had actually been part of the coalition, and helping to build the demonstrations, probably they woulda been."

And then he assumes that I must not have the facts straight and not read the books right (was it another city? was it another year? was it some other thing entirely?)

So, let me leave it with two observations:

1) First, i'm not drawing my views from books. I have read Halstead's history of the antiwar movement, but that's not my source. I was active in that movement, almost full time, in the coalitions, planning, debates etc. So what I am sharing is what i have seen and heard, or learned from people who saw and heard. (My observations on that demo come, in part, from knowing a former SWPer who was on their "peace police" squad, and now looks at what he did very differently).

2) I want to call attention (once again) to severian's method. Marxism-leninism-Maoism upholds historical materialism -- which takes as an important part of its method "draw truth from facts." We strain to see the world as it actually is.

Severian's method proceeds the other way. He starts with his assumptions (i.e. the SWP was always right, or whatever), and then manipulates the facts to serve his thesis. This is what maoists call "cutting the toes to fit the shoes."

He knows nothing about the demo i'm discussing. He can't find a discussion in his various books. So he just speculates "it must have been a thug attack by nlf-flying people, they must not have been involved in the planning." How does he do that? By inventing facts from his "truth" (i.e. reversing marxist theory of knowledge). He starts with his "truth" (really apriori and idealist assumptions, and then judges facts based on whether or not they conform to his prejudices.) This is the essense of idealist methodology -- and is common to dogmatism and religion.

So enough on that....
Let me write in a separate post about the actual reality of the 60s antiwar movements (from real facts) and see if we can learn some truth from that.

[flyby]

so anyway....

Let me describe some real world contradictions.

The anti-imperialists (i.e. in the case I'm discussing it was NYC's CoAIM, but in many cities it was SDSers. etc.) often (even constantly) sought to work within or in alliance with the various antiwar coalitions.

In preparation for the demos we are discussing (this is the spring of 1968 at the same time as the first powerful national high school strikes and the colombia take over), there was still an attempt to have one large coalition (drawing in many forces).

but there were some real and irreconsilable issues.

One issue was whether to give the podium over to bourgeois politicians, and if so which ones. A particular controversy was John Lindsay -- the moderate republican who was at that time mayor of NYC. He was preparing a run for the presidency, and was staking out his "antiwar" creds.

But for those of us who were revolutionary minded, what stood out was that this same John Lindsay had just launched a series of vicious attacks on the New York Black Panthers... and we really thought it would be outrageous to give him a prominent billing on the antiwar rally.

The more reformist forces in the coalition (in this case both the SWP and the CP) thought this was nuts -- to them Lindsay was a huge "plum." They thought the revolutionary politics of the Panthers was "ultra-left" anyway. The SWP in particular thought "this must be a single issue movement, so our only criterion should be whether someone embraces 'out now.'" to them, all other issues faded, or could be ignored.

A second and related issues was whether revolutonaries would be allowed to speak at the podium... in particular forces that strongly and publicly supported the Vietnamese in an internationalist way.

Both the SWP and CP said (in occassional small print in various places) that they (more or less) supported the Vietnamese. (But when pushed the SWP also had another rap: i.e. that they opposed stalinism and so were not close to the vietnamese. And the CP said they really supported negotiations and peace, not victory for the Vietnamese). In reality, they did not support the vietnamese -- but more obviously, they did not support ANYONE saying this prominently within the antiwar movement.

Why? Well, it is not a big surprise why... The antiwar sentiment in the U.S. was involving many different people, from many different classes, and in particular a chunk of the U.S. ruling class was moving to an antiwar position (as the examples of Lindsay, but also RFK, McGovern etc. suggested.)

And so, these ruling class forces simply did not want to be in any organized formation with forces that strongly put forward defeatism (organzing soldiers to revolt) or internationalism (supporting the natoinal liberations struggles in Vietnam) or revolutnary politics etc.

In many ways, the secret reason that the SWP even HAD its antiwar coalition was that the mainstream forces (especially in some key church hierarchies and in some major unioins like UAW) wanted to participate in mass legal marches, but did not want to do this in coalitions that were organizationally influenced by the CP (which was still controversial in the U.S., and in this war, even though their politics were not revolutionary at all.)

So the SWP was the unofficial "demo organzer" for those forces -- and was considered safe (by them).

And the price (the agreement) that the SWP had to adhere to was that it had to police these mass demos it led: it had to forbid revolutinary forces from reaching the podium, it had to enforce only 'Out Now" as the visible slogans, it had to make sure that the marches themselves would be strictly legal, and not cross police demands.

And this is what the SWP did, over and over and over.

And so, while the more revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces repeatedly participated in such marches and coalitions -- it also became clear, over and over, that THEIR price of participation had to be leaving THEIR politics at the door. Only politics acceptable to the most conservative and bourgeois forces could be visisble (to the press, the cameras, the public etc.)

So the bourgeois candidates (lindsay, or SWP's favorite Senator Vance Hartke or whatever) could speak, and express their bourgeois views on the war. But revolutnaries could not.

And so there was conflict.

And in the case of the demo I described -- the antiimperialists gathered in Washington square Park (many thousands, perhaps ten thousand) and sought to march to central park. They were attacked by phalanxes of police (not just once in the park, but over and over, as they fought their way uptown through manhattan). And finally significant parts of this march made it to Central Park (as a feeder march to the rally there). And then, once there they had to face the SWP "peace police" who were enforcing the rule of no revolutonary politics.

The slogans of the CoAIM march were:

Victory to the Vietnamese
Stop the War on Black America
The streets belong to the people.

in my next post, i will discuss some of the lessons i draw from this.

[flyby]

i'll be brief with this:

we need several things....

we need a revolutinary hard core... a revolutionary communist movement that is aproaching politics (and life!) from the point of view of "how do we overthrow capitalism and advance through socialism to a global classless liberated society?"

And we need to promote the views and vision of that movement throughout society -- winning over growing numbers of people, training new communists, making communist views part of the debate in society, taking on the lies and arguments of capitalisms defenders.

And at the same time, the struggle objectively needs many forms of unity -- since the resistance to this system and the movement to overthrow it will hardly just be limited to revolutionary communists or those who embrace Marxism.

Clearly, there is a need for a powerful, visible, growing, militant, fearless, unapologetic movement against U.S. imperialism's aggressive juggernaut of reaction and aggression (including but hardly limited to its invasion and occupation of Iraq.)

And in building such a movement there is a need for broad unity among people who disagree on many things.

The SWP/NPAC model from the 60s was to have a legal, loyal, single-issue approach (that in effect and by design, suppressed radical and revolutionary politics.)

We need an approach that is very different -- and where revolutionary communist forces, in part by their powerful promotion of anti-capitalist and communist politics, help create a new political climate. and we need alongside that, broad, principled unity around key areas of struggle -- to challenge, expose, and resist the moves of our oppressors, and draw new people into the struggle.

thoughts?

[flyby]

one final set of points:

a) It is ironic that today's SWP almost completely abstains from the organized fight against U.S. imperialism and its global crusade. (Which means they are playing an even LESS positive role than they played in the 1960s! a time when they at least threw their forces into organizing around one of the key issues of the day!)

Today the SWP has embraced a completely economist approach that says that supporting the trade union organizing among sections of industrial workers is the most important way of developing political consciousness and struggle among the people. (Which is so contradicted by facts and reality, that i can understand why the SWP trains its supporters like severian in thick dogmatic and religious methodology). If anyone wants to have a discussion of "economism" -- what it means, and why communists oppose that narrow and narrowing approach, we could discuss it somewhere!

b) there are approaches now which apply the methods i am advocating.

I suggest that people check out the the weekly Revolutinary Worker (http://rwor.org/wh-new.htm) -- which from a communist perspective exposes the system, the ruling class (see also the three main points (http://rwor.org/a/ideology/3mp.htm) by Bob Avakian which describe what they seek to accomplish by using this Leninist/What is to be Donist approach to communist work.

Also see the theoretical approach that they call Create Public Opinion, Seize Power (http://rwor.org/a/v20/1000-1009/1000/barw.htm) (which is part of the process by which the RCP's Chairman has "charted the uncharted course" of making revolution in a country like this.

In addition, there is the work done around Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience (http://www.notinourname.net/statement_conscience.html)-- which seeks to create and expand a basis of unity for oppositional forces that includes both a basis for very broad unity and a thrust of radical resistance to the sysem

I include these links, cuz i think they will give you a sense of how i think the lessons from the 60s (and the global lessons of the struggle for communism) apply to this moment.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)Since you bring it up, SDS did do something similar at the anti-Rusk demonstration (Nov. 1967) you mentioned earlier. The demonstration was mainly organized by the New York Parade Committee as a legal action, with permits, and the SDS National Office organized forays into the street, giving the cops an excuse to attack the whole demonstration.[/b]

That can't be right.

Flyby has a post about that...and I was not in New York City during those events and he was.

But the occasion in which Dean Rusk felt a need for a "strategic withdrawal" was at Harvard University...he departed through the steam tunnels to avoid some vigorous criticism from SDS members and supporters. :lol:

It was actually rather difficult for prominent pro-war speakers to "find a place" where they could be heard without disruption in those years; SDS was "all over" those bastards wherever they showed up.


flyby
In addition, there is the work done around Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience-- which seeks to create and expand a basis of unity for oppositional forces that includes both a basis for very broad unity and a thrust of radical resistance to the system

This strikes me, oddly enough, as quite similar to the Mobe and its successors...and to A.N.S.W.E.R. for that matter. Lots of "movement celebrities", even a politician or two, etc.

There's really nothing "like" SDS at the present time...though one could find some faint echoes of SDS here and there, particularly among some of the young and poorly organized anarchists.

It seems to me that the anti-war movement now is still like things were in 1963 or 1964...yes, there's opposition and some of it is briefly militant, but there's no on-going movement where internal political struggle takes place while at the same time generating continuous resistance to the whole system -- of which the wars are just the most outrageous symptom.

This generation's equivalent of SDS has yet to emerge.

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[flyby]

ah, yes, the Rusk demo....

Here is one version of the view: "Since you bring it up, SDS did do something similar at the anti-Rusk demonstration (Nov. 1967) you mentioned earlier. The demonstration was mainly organized by the New York Parade Committee as a legal action, with permits, and the SDS National Office organized forays into the street, giving the cops an excuse to attack the whole demonstration."

This is laden with "inventing facts based on assumptions."

Allow me a few factual points and then we can get to the heart of it -- i.e. the politics and the line issues.

First factually, this demo was a huge fight to prevent Dean Rusk to speak. That night in new york was heavy with tear gas, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of youth (college and high school) fought running battles with police across the glitzy midtown of NYC. He had come, in typical ruling class style, to make a major address to some bullshit foreign policy association -- but "the times they are achanging" -- and this meant that this hated war criminal increasingly couldn't go ANY-FUCKING-WHERE without facing the people, including youth waving the flags of his "enemy," the red flag of the world revolution and the national liberation flag of the Vietnamese fighters.

Now it is possible that, as Severian says, there was (somewhere in this mix) on some quiet corner an orderly little rally called by the New York Parade Committee. And if they were there somewhere, doing their thing, well, gee.... godbless'em! Certainly there is a need for quiet rallies, especially if there are people who are only willing to participate in that form.

But think, for a moment, about the mistaken reasoning that assumes that the militant streetfighting against Dean Rusk played no other role than as an "excuse" for the police to attack that tame little legal demostration taking place at the same time.

Talk about "a legend in your own mind." The pigs didn't want to attack the Parade Committee's demostration, they wanted to force the kids to join that constrained, obediant little rally and stay there!

Clearly in complex coalitions and movements, you need some sense of "working together" -- including tactically. But let me point out that the SWP coalitions wwere utterly rigid. They were not interested in "working together" -- if you read Halstead's book you can see that his current was even bitterly against civil disobedience as a tactic. They weren't very "flexible" or open to any discussion of these things -- or even making room for others (i.e. we do your thing here while you do your thing there -- this was not their approach).

Anyway, the Dean Rusk action was not defined by any permits, thank god! And the kids in the streets had never heard of this "Parade Committee" who held the permits and were (apparently) so disapproving of actually disrupting Rusk's talk!

And it was important that everywhere these war criminals went, kids were willing to disrupt, charge the doors, pack the surrounding streets, go door to door in the dorms mobilizing their classmates to fuck shit up. It got to where Dean Rusk couldn't go anywhere! In the heartland of his own fucking empire! And if someone like fascist college honcho Hiakawa tried to go to Boston, then Boston broke out in riots. If Defense Secretary/Warmaker MacNamara tried to go to Michigan, then Michigan was in for nights of riots and streetfighting!

It was powerful, it FORCED the whole society to confront and debate what was going on. It was a sign that the legitimacy of their power was being undermined and weakened.

And imagine how lame -- how fucking utterly lame -- it would have been, if all these kids had instead just gotten themselves permits and stood in some assigned place during the Rusk speeches, obeying the rules, and certainly (!) not giving the police ANY excuses TO ATTACK! Let's all be grateful that the broad masses of radical youth were not influenced by (or shut up by) the SWP's awful legalist and social-pacifist prejudices!

The movement had a rowdy and radical BACKBONE! And those forces (though many twists and turns) also gave rise to an ongoing and revolutinary current within the U.S.

Now, lets get more in to the politics:

First, the political approach and alliances of the SWP meant they in practice had a tactical FIXATION on "large, legal, peaceful, rallies and marches around a single issue." They were fixated. They thought no other form of struggle mattered, and any other form of struggle was a diversion.

I won't repeat what i said above about the political line and orientation that underlies that fixation -- but it had to do with an arrangement that lay at the heart of their NPAC coalition, and at the forces whose alliance they felt was key (Reuthers UAW, Senator Vance Hartke, and evertyhing related to, and dependent on, those connections, and other connections like them.)

And one of the ways that some historians can say "well SDS just disappeared from the scene" is that after about 1967, SDS was not involved (as a national organization) in the coalitions who got the permits (and ordered the busses) for the big peace marches. And if that is all that matters to you,if THAT is your measure of who exists and who doesn't -- then you can assert (or pretend) that SDS and its thousands of commited activists just disappeared (like a puff of smoke). However it is wrong on every level.

The country was erupting in a huge wave of resistance and struggle -- which was certainly not fixated on large legal mass marches, and was not even limited to the vietnam war.

There were urban rebellions in a hundred cities in 1968! There were campus takeovers, burnings of Rotc buildings, a mass movement of draft resistance, thousands of demostrations at local targets, disruption of military labs, exposure of campus/military complicity, GI coffeehouses, panther support activities, etc. etc.

I can't even list all the fucking things and forms of struggle (large and small) that were going on. But I can tell you from deep personal experience, that the SWP/YSA types were awol from all THOSE forms of struggle -- to a large extent.)

And, meanwhile, within SDS there was a real discussion about "going to the community" -- on several levels: first, there was a sense that real radical change was not going to come from any single mass movement to pressure the government.

Second, there was a growing and urgent sense that radical forces had to develop deep ties among the masses of people, including the masses of white people in the working class -- and that if "the movement" came to a crisis point with the system, and if black people continued to rise up more and more powerfully, there was a need to make LEAPS in the organization and understanding of poor white people -- if this whole upsurge was to ripen into a revolutionary possibility to actually "do the dog in Babylon."

And so while the SWP (and its youth group YSA, and its captured antiwar arm SMC, and its coalition NPAC) SINGLEMINDEDLY focused on large, legal, peaceful single-issue marches -- the increasingly radicalized forces of SDS were trying to work and think on many levels -- including on the important level of "how does our upsurge of today go over to an actual revolution, and how to we bring revolutonary consciousness to broader and newer sections of the oppressed."

Just to be clear: I am not arguing that the "large, legal, peaceful, single-issue marches" were wrong (and certainly not that they would be wrong now). They were not wrong. They were needed. (And such mass mobilizations are needed now too.)

Back then, everyone attended. They were part of the scene. But I am arguing that they were far (far!) from the cutting edge of events, not the most important form of struggle, not the most important arena, and not the most important focus of revolutionary thinking and activity.

[flyby]

Now I have focused this on the line of SWP.

But I have to say, many of the same thing can (and should) be said about the forces leading the "other" mass coalition (which was generally known as the "peace and justice" folks under various names.) This coalition was generally an alliance of the CPUSA, with some pacifist forces and some left leaning religious people -- and their characteristic was to make the movement 'multi-issue." And on the surface, this meant that they wanted to 'take up racism" -- and that seemed like a good idea. But underneath that, there was a strategy of getting to antiwar movement to adopt and promote a whole program that was going to be an ELECTORAL PLATFORM , to usher all these forces into the election campaign of left Democrats (especially in the presidential campaigns, but also at the lower levels where revisionists and "left democrats" had a better chance of winning office.)

And I have to say, it was a FIGHT to even get the CPUSA to adopt an antiwar position! This may seem strange now, but in the early days of the antiwar movement, the CP argued (and rather nastily) that the demand "Stop the War" was ultra-left. They insisted that the demand should be "negotiations now" -- and not "pull out the troops." (This is also described in Halsteads book "Out Now" in an interesting and informative way -- even if it is done from his, i.e. the SWP's, political perspective.)

And they put this forward because of who THEY were hoping to unite with. Once there was a significant and powerful sections WITHIN THE RULING CLASS ITSELF that was calling for an end to the war and withdrawal of U.S. troops, then (of course and revealingly) the CPUSA was much more willing to embrace this supposedly "ultra-left" slogan.

(And I have seen this played out since: it is often controversial, even within supposedly-antiwar coalitions, whether to be against the war! This was true in the first Iraq war, when many forces supported "embargo not invasion." And by that, lent support to many of the excuses and prewar moves of the U.S. And it is true today when among many people opposing the war in Iraq is remains VERY CONTROVERSIAL to say "we support the U.S. just getting its fucking troops out." since many opponents of the war have questions about whether those troops might nt be prefeable to anarchy, or may not somehow do some good or whatnot.)

Anyway, I'm saying that while there was broad unity among many forces on the need to oppose the war, and demand withdrawal.

But the SDS forces (including the growing forces attracted to MLM and revolutionary communism) were grappling with "roads to the proletariat" -- how toextend the growing revolutionary movement, and help it "leap" from the campus to the neighborhood. How to take Marxism "home" to the proletariat.

In the Bay Area, Bob Avakian (already known as a leading and very radical activist close to the Panthers) moved from Berkeley to Richmond -- as part of a project that was determined to organize white working class youth into the revolutinary movement. The radicals in the Bay Area were not generally affiliated with SDS, but this move, and the reports from Richmond had a profound effect on parts of SDS across the country. (This "move to richmond" is described in some fascinating detail in Avakian's new memoir "From Ike to Mao... And Beyond" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0976023628/ref=cm_bg_d/002-3815779-5099207?v=glance))

So what were these SDS projects like?

Many dozens of them exploded into working class communities between 1967 and 1972. They were politically very diverse -- from Yippies, to "community organizers" to Maoist, and many were mixes of different ideologies and programs.

Many of them became the basis for building revolutionary communist organization. Many faded out. Others took on an increasingly social democratic character.

One that I saw close up (just to pick an example) was dedicated to winning over white working class youth to revolutionary politics. There were radical newspaper sold in the locak youth hangouts -- where the police tried to stop the distribution of these underground papers, and the kids responded by rioting night after night. There was draft counseling to help kids stay out of the war. There were Panther-like "serve the people programs" like food coops. There was distribution of radical literature on birth control, abortion and sex (at a time when such information was often unattainable, especially for kids). And a lot of talk about women's liberation. Study groups in radicaltheory, including MLM. Consciousness raising circles for teenage women grappling with how to live and love and struggle for a new world. There were joint demostrations, supported by the SDS projects and also other currents -- to support the emprisoned panthers, to oppose the war, to wave the NLF flag high in the streets, to dream of revolution, a new life and future worth living in!

I'm raising this because I want to share with you all a side of the story that is often misrepresented.

Those fixated on "large, legal, single, issue" demos act as if SDS just "failed to live up to its potential." As if it could have become a big bus-ordering recruitment pool for revisionist peace police. (Ugh, a model of "leftist" that is really just a hair away from hall monitor in high school!)

And, on the other hand, redstar kinda mourns the fading of the rough-and-tumble campus mass SDS organization, semi-anarchist, etc. And as if the rise of "leninist-Maoism" was simply an error or even a tragedy.

Well, look, SDS had to change, and the radicals themselves had to change, radically if they were going to really dream their dreams of revolution.

One early member of the maoist Revolutionary Union said "You have to want revolution so bad that you are willing to be scientific about it." People had to leave the campuses, bring politics to new circles, and also soon deal withthe challenges of carrying on after the 60s upsurge itself had ebbed.

And out of SDS came waves of serious cadre and serious organizing experiments -- and intense line struggle on ALL sides, over how to go and how to do it.

And redstar says he doesn't see anything like SDS today....

And of course, how can I not agree?

But who would want really want a rerun of SDS? (I assume redstar woudn't either!)

If you think about it, SDS (however great it was, and however positive its contributions were) can't meet those needs. You can't turn back the clock. You can't pluck a political form from its historical context, and think it will be the model for something as good, now, in a very different historical context.

We know so much more now! And in particular we have developed and organized revolutionary forces of a caliber that simply didn't exist in the 60s. Now we have a party like the RCP and a leadership like Bob Avakian!

Those things were so sorely lacking forty years ago, where things were so primitive and we had to fumble for each new insight and build everything from scratch.

(Though obviously in one sense, Bob was there then and playing an important early rolein kicking things to a new level, founding the RU, fighting for communist theory and analysis etc., but he was obviously also not yet the kind of developed communist leader that he has now become.]

And in some ways the stakes are ao much higher now!

In 1965, it was necessary to FIGHT to get a glimpse of a communist vision (because between the anti-communists of the McCarthy types and the phony communists of the Breshnev type, communism was looking pretty fucked up..... at least until the Vietnamese started defeating the U.S., and until Mao and the Red Guards raised new hopes of a wild and radical and tumultous vision of socialism).

Just to end by dropping another big topic: We need a revolutinoary movement that has both "solid core and a lot of elasticity."

We need a revolutionary communist current that dares to boldly speak its name and share its visions -- that deeply grasps and unites around the profound strategic insights that have been developed since the 60s, and fights to make such politics and ideology the property of wider and widers circles of the people.

And we need broad debate and turmoil -- both in society generally and among radical people. Broad principled unity, a broad militant resistance movement -- and within that, an attractive core with its eyes set on the farthest horizons, on the complete defeat and destruction of U.S. imperialism and a whole new liberated communist world.

There are things about that vision that remind me of SDS: the heady debates, the rising optimism about revolution, the fearless willinness to sacrifice and risk throwing away careers, the deep-heartfelt solidarity with people who are oppressed and who are rising up in revolution.... all of that we need to cherish and spread widely today.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by flyby
And, on the other hand, redstar kinda mourns the fading of the rough-and-tumble campus mass SDS organization, semi-anarchist, etc. And as if the rise of "Leninist-Maoism" was simply an error or even a tragedy.

I think it was both.

An error because Maoism was unsuited to advanced capitalist countries lacking any significant peasantry. If we didn't know that in 1969, we certainly can't help knowing it now since no Maoist group in the "west" has ever been able to achieve even the beginnings of a mass base...unlike SDS.

A tragedy because the splintering of SDS essentially removed that "sense of being part of something bigger" that was (and is!) so necessary to engaging in sustained resistance "in the belly of the beast".

To be sure, the small number of kids who set up Maoist grouplets could identify with Mao's China...so they could "keep on truckin'". But most of those "100,000" or whatever large number who were part of SDS just gradually drifted away.

And even of that minority who did become active Leninist-Maoists, most of them were lost as well. When Mao started hanging out with Richard Nixon...what could they conclude but that "everything" is "fucked"?

I read the other day that the Maoist group in Denmark just dissolved itself. I think that's already taken place in most or nearly all of the advanced capitalist countries. Your party -- the RCP -- is among the very last of the Maoist groups in the "west" that still functions.

And while your commitment and determination to "stay the course" may be admirable, you're really not making any significant breakthroughs these days.

When your newspaper is not talking about Bob Avakian, it sometimes contains some pretty good articles.


And redstar says he doesn't see anything like SDS today....

And of course, how can I not agree?

But who would want really want a rerun of SDS? (I assume redstar wouldn't either!)

No, organizations "belong" to specific times and conditions and attempts to mechanically reproduce them at a later time usually just end up as farce. (This applies especially, please note, to Leninist parties.)

What is missing today is the equivalent of SDS...a large movement that fulfills the functions that SDS fulfilled and goes even further.

You know that the vast majority of SDS chapters were never "organized" by the National Office; kids heard about SDS actions and spontaneously organized themselves into a chapter...even at "little shit colleges" in the "middle of nowhere".

There's nothing today that inspires people in that way.

And without it, all you end up with is "Mobe-type" formations that are pretty good at getting police permits and chartering buses, fair at getting press coverage and "name speakers", and utterly wretched when it comes to genuine resistance to the despotism of capital.


We know so much more now! And in particular we have developed and organized revolutionary forces of a caliber that simply didn't exist in the 60s. Now we have a party like the RCP and a leadership like Bob Avakian!

No, you have "a party like the RCP and a leadership like Bob Avakian". Those of us who are not Maoists don't "have" either one.

Fortunately.

-----------------------------------------------------

Here are some more things I've written about SDS...

SDS: A Revolutionary Model? (http://redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1082819073&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

Students for a Democratic Society vs. Leninism (http://redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1083585987&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

SDS Revisited (http://redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1102950566&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

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[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 12:42 PM
One issue was whether to give the podium over to bourgeois politicians, and if so which ones. A particular controversy was John Lindsay -- the moderate republican who was at that time mayor of NYC. He was preparing a run for the presidency, and was staking out his "antiwar" creds.
So, not only did the Co-Aim insist they had a right to speak whether or not the coalition chose to invite them, they also believed they had a right to veto other speakers, which the coalition chose to invite.

On a number of occasions, ultralefts conducted physical attacks and other disruptions of antiwar events in an effort to block speakers they disapproved of: liberal politicians and union officials, mostly.

That this is a thuggish attack on other people's democratic rights, should be obvious to almost anyone. Certainly the coalition's defense of its democratic right to invite whoever it wanted...needs no special justification.

After saying his heroes "fought their way onto the platform", Flyby cannot serious dispute that they conducted a physical attack. The disagreement between Flyby and myself is not really a dispute about what occurred: it is a disagreement about whether it is OK to physically attack political gatherings you disapprove of.

IMO it is not OK. Physical force should never be used to settle disagreements within the working-class movement. Its use is one of the hallmarks of Stalinism. Those who are attacked have the right to defend themselves, and should be helped by anyone who cares about workers' democracy.

As to method, I am starting with facts: Halstead's book is full of them, often footnoted, and nobody has ever been able to seriously dispute their accuracy. And no-one has to take my word for any of these facts: my sources are checkable.

Flyby, on the other hand...was he there? Apparently not, he says he is drawing on anecdotes some unnamed person told him. ("(My observations on that demo come, in part, from knowing a former SWPer who was on their "peace police" squad, and now looks at what he did very differently.") As Flyby himself is anonymous, like most internet posters, we have uncheckable anonymous hearsay twice removed. From somebody who, elsewhere in his initial post, got the SDS March on Washington and the '67 Pentagon March mixed up. Not so reliable, even assuming he intends to be honest...which is a big assumption, when dealing with anyone trained in the school of Stalinism.


a) It is ironic that today's SWP almost completely abstains from the organized fight against U.S. imperialism and its global crusade. (Which means they are playing an even LESS positive role than they played in the 1960s! a time when they at least threw their forces into organizing around one of the key issues of the day!)

What is ironic, is that the SWP's actions during the Vietnam War are so obviously correct in hindsight, that tendencies which bitterly opposed them at the time....now complain that the SWP isn't doing the same today. Many imitate the tactics and priorities of the 60s and 70s SWP...without the revolutionary strategy that underlay them.

As I've explained throughout this thread, a proletarian orientation underlay those tactics. That orientation is what is constant in the policies of communists, despite the changes of tactics and priorites which may seem "ironic" to some.

Tactics are specific to a place and time. And that time had a lot of exceptional features: briefly, a massive youth radicalization during a period of economic prosperity, and such conservatism in the labor movement that it was impossible to do communist political work in the unions.

In contrast, we are now in a period of long-term structural economic problems; there is no massive youth radicalization or any mass social movement going on; the antiwar protests which are occuring lack the objectively anti-imperialist dynamic of the anti-Vietnam War movement; and most importantly of all there are many in the ranks of the labor movement who are looking for ways to fight back against the bosses' offensive.

Priorites also are specific. The SDS resolutions I've quoted in this thread, sound ridiculous now because they downplayed the central issue of that particular time. Obvious in hindsight; not always obvious at the time; rarely obvious in advance.

That's one of the great challenges of revolutionary leadership: knowing what to do next. A difficult question to answer...certainly just repeating what was done in past decades doesn't cut it.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2005, 09:41 PM
That can't be right.

Flyby has a post about that...and I was not in New York City during those events and he was.

But the occasion in which Dean Rusk felt a need for a "strategic withdrawal" was at Harvard University...he departed through the steam tunnels to avoid some vigorous criticism from SDS members and supporters. :lol:

It was actually rather difficult for prominent pro-war speakers to "find a place" where they could be heard without disruption in those years; SDS was "all over" those bastards wherever they showed up.
Actually, it's not clear from Flyby's post if he was there or if he's going on hearsay again.

But yeah, we're apparently talking about different events, which is why it helps to mention dates and places...

On the tactic generally: nobody could actually prevent these speakers from being heard (heck they got TV) nor is trying to silence your opponents such a great goal anyway...especially when they have a lot more physical means of silencing you than vice versa.

So whether there is more or less disruption, either way the demonstration is a symbolic action seeking to make a point and spread a message....which brings us back to, what kind of tactics actually help spread the message more, and which kind repel more people than they attract.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
The disagreement between Flyby and myself is not really a dispute about what occurred: it is a disagreement about whether it is OK to physically attack political gatherings you disapprove of.

IMO it is not OK. Physical force should never be used to settle disagreements within the working-class movement.

Whoa! :o

In what sense are bourgeois liberals to be legitimately considered "part of the working class movement"?

Why is it "wrong" to attack their meetings or meetings that invited them to speak?

Their purpose, after all, is to divert and weaken the resistance to imperialism.

They are part of the class enemy.

And how far do you want to go with that? Is it "wrong" to physically attack a Nazi meeting? How about when Progressive Labor used to go around attacking those racist "scientists" and trying to bust up their meetings? (I actually thought at the time that that was one of the few "really good things" that PL did.)

I'll grant you your understandable Trotskyist "sensitivities" on this matter; it probably wasn't much fun to have your public meetings attacked by CPUSA goons in the 1930s and 40s.

But you seem to project a view that the domestic struggle against imperialism "was" or "should have been" or "is" some kind of debate at Oxford or Cambridge...in which scholarly decorum and a spirit of disinterested inquiry prevails.

And you must be aware that that is really not the case at all.


On the tactic generally: nobody could actually prevent these speakers from being heard (heck they got TV) nor is trying to silence your opponents such a great goal anyway...especially when they have a lot more physical means of silencing you than vice versa.

Indeed, they have such means and at Kent State and other schools, they used them.

Nevertheless, from 1966 onwards, I think we radicalized a lot of people by showing that these mandarins were not "untouchable superiors" or "sacred personages" to whom the people "owe deference".

To put it in contemporary terms, imagine if some lefty was invited onto the Bill O'Riley program to be verbally bullied...and the guy just got up in the middle of the program and punched O'Riley in the face so hard that the bastard fell out of his chair! :D

It would be a form of "de-mystification"...showing that deference to the class enemy is not compulsory.

That's what we in SDS did...and the SWP did not.

Did we "alienate" more people than we won over?

I can't say...nor do I think anyone can.

There were polls taken during that period -- and you know how dubious polls can be. Nevertheless, there was at least one in the late 60s suggesting that more than a million college kids thought there was a real need for "a mass revolutionary party" in the United States.

Not a bad decade's work. :)

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[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

*Shudder*

I can't believe any self-described revolutionary actually defends the peace-police. Do we really need people within social movements to do the cops' work for them?
As far as I'm concerned, when our supposed allies in struggle behave as though they are our enemies, there is no reason to treat them any differently. Callous? Arguably. But, then again, it's no more callous than violently supressing revolutionaries who are too far left - that is, not willing to play the moronic and ineffectual liberal games.


which brings us back to, what kind of tactics actually help spread the message more, and which kind repel more people than they attract.

I agree! What sort of tactics draw people to a revolutionary movement, and what sort of tactics bring people aboard for more single-issue bourgeois-liberal bullshit?
Here's a hint: When we use the peace-police to supress radicals, and reject all illegal action, then we don't draw people towards radicalism. We reinforce the myth that radicals are "scary" and "bad" - and by association, that "revolution" is just the business of a lunatic fringe.

[Severian]

Originally posted by redstar2000+Feb 28 2005, 09:21 AM--> (redstar2000 @ Feb 28 2005, 09:21 AM)
Severian
The disagreement between Flyby and myself is not really a dispute about what occurred: it is a disagreement about whether it is OK to physically attack political gatherings you disapprove of.

IMO it is not OK. Physical force should never be used to settle disagreements within the working-class movement.

Whoa! :o

In what sense are bourgeois liberals to be legitimately considered "part of the working class movement"?

Why is it "wrong" to attack their meetings or meetings that invited them to speak? [/b]
Excuse me, but you and Flyby keep describing these rallies as SWP-controlled. So is the SWP part of the working-class movement, or not? Does it cease to be part of the working-class movement if a liberal politician, or a union official, is invited to speak?

Perhaps Co-Aim disagrees with that decision. Perhaps they're not happy about being outvoted. Fine. Nobody's making them come to the rally.

How about the union officials, which assorted ultraleft thugs tried to block from speaking just as much as the liberal politicians? Are they not part of the working-class movement? Seems to me they have a lot better claim than PL or Co-Aim.

And these mass demonstrations, against the imperialist war in Vietnam, with demands you've admitted are objectively anti-imperialist...is it OK to physically attack them, and try to take over the stage, or not? Seems to me that for the purpose at hand they have to be treated as part of the working-class movement; that is, it's just as wrong to attack them as a radical-left party or a union meeting. A lot more workers attended those rallies than meetings of Co-Aim or other ultraleft groups, that's for sure.


I'll grant you your understandable Trotskyist "sensitivities" on this matter; it probably wasn't much fun to have your public meetings attacked by CPUSA goons in the 1930s and 40s.

Indeed. Nor was the SWP the only group to be so attacked - IWWs and anarchists were, also. The attacks ended, definitively, only when the CPUSA became too weak and persecuted to continue them.

Where the Stalinists held power, and during the Spanish Civil War, these attacks rose to the level of mass murder of revolutionary workers.

The 60s and 70s Stalinist goon squad action was in the same tradition. They used physical force to settle all kinds of factional disagreements, including among themselves. One extreme expression was the violent faction fights within the Black Panther Party and between the BPP and other groups such as Karenga's US. Cointelpro helped fan them, of course, but the Maoist tradition of factional thuggery prepared the ground.

All this created the atmosphere where Lyndon LaRouche thought he could get away with goon-squad attacks on competing groups. Remember the LaRouchites were a left group at the time, split away from SDS; before that LaRouche personally had belonged to the SWP. In 1973, they began attacks on meetings of the CP, which they denounced as a reformist obstacle to revolution.

The SWP and others came to the physical defense of the CP, acting on the principle of workers' democracy I stated before. The LaRouchites then extended their attacks to the SWP. It was necessary to teach them some rather severe lessons before they stopped. The whole business was the definitive step in starting the LaRouchites on a course towards the far right; see Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism by Chip Berlet for details. Or here for a brief version. (http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/Mop-Up.html)

The LaRouchites were treated far more harshly than Co-Aim or PL ever were; marshals at antiwar demonstrations were unarmed and normally tried to keep the ultralefts separate by pacifist-style methods like linked arms. Those protecting the stage - often union members BTW - operated under different rules but still pretty restrained. And even in response to the thug attacks, ultraleft groups were not excluded wholesale from the antiwar movement. For example, at the July 1971 NPAC convention, even after 100 or so PL disrupters were thrown out for attempting to shout down invited speakers, other PL members spoke in the debate. By the next convention, PL had decided that physical force was "an ineffective tactic towards NPAC." Heh.

So if Flyby and VMC really want to denounce "peace police", why not start with some genuinely repressive action, beating the crap out of the LaRouchites? Perhaps because the LaRouchites, by taking their political approach to its logical conclusion, made it a little too clear who was responsible for the violence. Again, self-defense needs no apology.


But you seem to project a view that the domestic struggle against imperialism "was" or "should have been" or "is" some kind of debate at Oxford or Cambridge...in which scholarly decorum and a spirit of disinterested inquiry prevails.

Co-Aim and PL weren't conducting a struggle against imperialism...they were conducting a struggle against the antiwar movement. Methods that may be OK, depending on the tactical situation, against the class enemy, are not OK within the class. This should not be so hard for a self-proclaimed anti-authoritarian to understand.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2005, 12:33 PM
But let me point out that the SWP coalitions wwere utterly rigid. They were not interested in "working together" -- if you read Halstead's book you can see that his current was even bitterly against civil disobedience as a tactic. They weren't very "flexible" or open to any discussion of these things -- or even making room for others (i.e. we do your thing here while you do your thing there -- this was not their approach).
Excuse me, but if Co-Aim or other ultralefts wanted to "do their own thing" they were 100% free to do so. At some other time or place. With the relative handful who will voluntarily show up for a fight with the cops.

But sometimes they didn't want to do that, did they? For some reason Flyby doesn't want to state, they insisted - and many still insist - on "doing their own thing" at the same time and place as legal demonstrations. I'll state it: because they want to involve more people than would volunteer for their tactics.

Street-fighting and legal demonstrations don't mix. Street fights - not to mention tear gas - can't be confined within some set of boundaries and kept from messing up the legal demonstration.

Civil disobedience can happen within limits, requires discipline, and doesn't take the clear responsibility for violence off of the cops. So it can be combined with legal demonstrations. So although the SWP never thought the tactic was effective, it didn't object to others in the coalition planning civil disobedience as a part of legal demonstrations. As long as the mass action component wasn't interfered with.

It is true that the SWP thought everything other than mass action was a diversion. 'Course mass action took various forms, not just rallies, but student strikes for example.


ust to be clear: I am not arguing that the "large, legal, peaceful, single-issue marches" were wrong (and certainly not that they would be wrong now). They were not wrong. They were needed. (And such mass mobilizations are needed now too.)

That sounds like hindsight - belatedly adopting aspects of the SWP's tactics. And probably not something your current would have said at the time. Certainly not what they did.

If you actually believed that, you could have organized mass demonstrations, or - gasp - joined with other groups already doing so, as well as "doing your own thing" at other times and places. Heck, those mass demonstrations woulda made a good place to pass out leaflets and invite people to your other actions...'course most people woulda been too sensible anyway. So you decided instead to disrupt the legal demonstrations, and sometimes physically attack the stage.

Contrary to an implication elsewhere in your post, nobody was going around censoring signs. Nor was anyone keeping people from passing out leaflets. Not after...'66 at the latest. Certainly the SWP always opposed that kind of exclusionary practice. Nor was it all that enforceable, even when SANE and other groups early on tried to enforce it.

As for the Rusk action, we have two conflicting accounts, one from Halstead and one from some anonymous guy on the net who doesn't actually say whether he was there or say where exactly he gets his info from. The second account is improbable on its face, since usually a lot more people are willing to participate in a legal demonstration than a street fight with the cops. And the New York Peace Parade Committe was certainly capable of organizing massive, legal demonstrations, and did so on numerous other occasions.


The pigs didn't want to attack the Parade Committee's demostration, they wanted to force the kids to join that constrained, obediant little rally and stay there!

According to Halstead, the police did in fact attack the legal demo. Whether they wanted to or not, nobody can say without ESP, but they did it. It's a typical police action when someone leaves a legal demonstration, charges into the street and fights with the cops, and then runs back into the crowd. I've seen similar things happen myself.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
Excuse me, but you and Flyby keep describing these rallies as SWP-controlled. So is the SWP part of the working-class movement, or not? Does it cease to be part of the working-class movement if a liberal politician, or a union official, is invited to speak?

If you want to maintain the view that the Mobe, et.al., was "not controlled by the SWP", I will not dispute the point...even though I think everyone or nearly everyone in SDS thought that such was the case.

But if you are "part of the working-class movement" and want to be thought of in that regard, what the hell were you doing inviting bourgeois liberals or labor aristocrats to address your meetings?

Or, if you were out-voted and had those kinds of speakers imposed on you by a majority of the coalition, why did you stand for that?

Frankly that seems to me to be extraordinarily unprincipled...like those "anarchists" who were telling us to "vote for Kerry".

You may respond that as an "ultra-leftist" I simply "don't understand" coalition work.

I guess I don't. :P

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[redstar2000]

Here are my two posts that were deleted from this thread after the server crash...



It helped build the rally and involve more people, including more workers.

Were they giving you "legitimacy" or were you contributing to their legitimacy?

Do you think that "we are more effective" standing along side bourgeois liberals or labor aristocrats or that "they are more effective" because we've helped them polish their "creds" as "real opponents" of things as they are?

Is it in our class interests to make some of our enemies "look better" than they actually are?

Why?


...how could you function in the unions without working with some labor officials sometimes?

Good question...and rather far off-topic. We're talking here, presumably, of inviting some labor aristocrats to speak at an anti-war rally...and tell us "why" we should support the Democratic Party.

Do we need to hear that?

Again, why?


Please, explain to me how the elected leaders of the largest workers' organizations in this country are not part of the workers' movement.

That's an easy one. Union leaders have learned from the bourgeoisie how to fake elections. (Only if they "have to", of course.)

Some unions probably still retain faint traces of the 1930s and 40s...a curious and almost archaic respect for the will of the membership.

But I expect most of them are about as "democratic" as the Congress of the United States.

Surely it must have occurred to you by now that we need "a new CIO"...that what we have now is a lap-dog labor "movement" run by capitalist lackeys and/or outright thieves.


The liberal politicians and labor bureaucrats were, under pressure of the growing movement, endorsing our position, not us theirs.

No, you were not endorsing their ideas...you were endorsing their legitimacy. You were saying, in effect, that these people "are our allies" and "worthy of our respect".

Neither one of those things was true then, of course, much less now.


What principle is being broken exactly?

The principle of not knowingly entering into an alliance with the class enemy.


If principle was the criterion, no tendency other than communists would qualify.

And by no means all of them. *laughs*

Seriously, I think this dispute can only be resolved in terms of what kind of movement do you want to build?

A liberal and ceremonial anti-war coalition will be, perforce, led by liberal politicians, labor aristocrats, clergymen, and such types.

A radical and confrontational resistance will have a different constituency and produce different kinds of leaders with different kinds of ideas.

And in the ordinary course of events, "never the twain shall meet".


My question is, do you think it's OK to settle this disagreement with goon-squad methods? Mr. Anti-authoritarian?

I think I'd take it on a "case-by-case" basis. I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to put a lot of time and energy into bashing liberal "anti-war" gatherings on a systematic basis...but I might be willing to make an occasional exception when especially provoked.

If, as was indicated, the coalition invited Mayor John Lindsay to speak in the immediate aftermath of a violent police attack on the Black Panther Party...well, that's pretty provocative. I can see a lot of SDSers and their sympathizers (hardly "goons") being pretty pissed off by something as brazen as that.

And a point I've made before: I'm not anti-authoritarian when it comes to the class enemy.
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They [bourgeois liberal politicians] came out against the war, under the pressure of growing popular opposition, in order to polish their image. Excluding them from antiwar actions won't stop that. Demanding they vote against funding the war, then, might help...

I think this is a pretty revealing statement; you (and presumably your party) still imagine that "portions" of the class enemy can "do something useful".

In Marx's time, that was true. In the present time, it may well be true in the semi-capitalist provinces of the empire.

I don't see how any case can be made for that in the advanced capitalist countries...not in the 1960s and certainly not now.

If they do anything "progressive" now, it's almost sure to be an unintended consequence of something reactionary.


After winning that battle, we're going to turn around and exclude the liberals and labor officials...which really means excluding ourselves, as they still had a bigger following among working people? Nonsensical.

Is that how you decide "who to exclude"? If some group has a "mass following" among workers, then "they're in"?

No matter what their politics???


Originally posted by Peter Camejo
And to those politicians who are joining the bandwagon, this antiwar movement is not for sale. This movement is not for sale now, not in 1970 and not in 1972.

The movement may not have been for sale, be he was. *laughs*


For me, the workers' movement is just that. It involves actual workers, and their organizations, whatever I may think of the leadership. If middle-class leftist groups are included, it's because they still have some relationship to the workers organizations.

Ok, there's nothing intrinsically "wrong" with a purely pragmatic definition...but there are certainly logical consequences of that view. When you try to analyze the existing trade unions (in the United States) "as a movement", you're in trouble. They don't act like one. At all!

In fact, the leaders most closely resemble a "temp agency"...renting out collective labor power and raking off a commission.


For you, it seems to mean something else, defined in ideological not class terms. "Communism is not a doctrine but a MOVEMENT; it proceeds not from principles but from FACTS..... Communism, insofar as it is a theory, is the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat in this struggle, and the theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat." Remember? The class and the class struggle come first, ideology is just a reflection of that.

There have certainly been times when that would have been a pretty good description...and I expect those times to come again.

But at the moment, that description just doesn't fit the facts...at least in the U.S. Class struggle continues to take place...but it's almost completely fragmented and disorganized. The "position of the proletariat in this struggle" is one of almost complete demoralization.

And, in fact, this has been the situation among the American proletariat since Taft-Hartley and McCarthyism...over a half-century of pretty much nothing.

Granted that in other countries, the description makes a good deal more sense.


Excuse me, when did it become a principle that communists can never work with any capitalist force, for any purpose whatsoever?

You mean do I have an "authority" to "quote from"? No. (Maybe I could find some good quotes if I looked for them...but at the moment I don't feel like going to the trouble.)

I think that it's a good principle to follow because I don't see anything to be gained by alliances with the class enemy (or portions thereof) in the advanced capitalist countries.

In the semi-capitalist countries, it may make sense to work with "progressive bourgeois elements"...if you can find some.

In the advanced capitalist countries, the bourgeoisie is entirely reactionary.

Schemes to "use" the rivalries between different reactionaries "for our benefit" will, in my opinion, always come to grief.


I see. What a "principled" basis for action...it depends on how mad you are.

It's the same thing that often motivates a wildcat strike. "How mad you are" is a perfectly legitimate basis for taking an unusual action...up to and including revolution itself.
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[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2005, 04:26 PM

...how could you function in the unions without working with some labor officials sometimes?

Good question...and rather far off-topic.
It might be a lengthy digression, yes....but in principle, the question is the same. If it is against principle to work with labor officials, that would apply in the unions as well as the antiwar movement.

As for why, already said. Discussions tend to go around in circles if you ignore what's been previously posted.


If, as was indicated, the coalition invited Mayor John Lindsay to speak in the immediate aftermath of a violent police attack on the Black Panther Party...well, that's pretty provocative. I can see a lot of SDSers and their sympathizers (hardly "goons") being pretty pissed off by something as brazen as that.

Hm...but according to Flyby, this attack was carried out by Co-Aim (which included the Workers' World youth group* and the "Committee to Aid the NLF"), not SDSers. Do you know something the rest of us don't?

Do you - or anyone - actually know what Lindsay did, or how it was perceived by most workers, particularly Black workers, in NYC? If he was in fact an especially hated figure, or worse than most capitalist politicians, that probably woulda worked against the goal of drawing in more working people, including more working people who are Black. But right now we don't know if anyone other than white ultraleft students was in fact especially upset at him. Possibly 'cause they expected more of a liberal politician, and felt betrayed?


And a point I've made before: I'm not anti-authoritarian when it comes to the class enemy.

And this example brings up one of the points of tension between proletarian dictatorship and workers' democracy: who decides what's the class enemy and what's a disagreement withing the working class?

Under Stalinism, all disagreement is typically labelled pro-capitalist. Even under the best of leaderships, the suppression of pro-capitalist groups tends to have a chilling effect on the freest possible discussion among workers.



They [bourgeois liberal politicians] came out against the war, under the pressure of growing popular opposition, in order to polish their image. Excluding them from antiwar actions won't stop that. Demanding they vote against funding the war, then, might help...

I think this is a pretty revealing statement; you (and presumably your party) still imagine that "portions" of the class enemy can "do something useful".

What? I said it would be useful to demand they vote against funding the war. Does a lot more than exclusion to illustrate the halfhearted, even phony, nature of the dovish bourgeois politicians' opposition to the war.

Now that you mention it, it would be undeniably "useful" to the Vietnamese revolution if Congress had cut off funding for the war...but they didn't, of course.

So you're right that:

I don't see how any case can be made for that in the advanced capitalist countries...not in the 1960s and certainly not now.

What's more, it's true everywhere.

BTW, I don't speak for the SWP; heck I don't even belong to it anymore.



After winning that battle, we're going to turn around and exclude the liberals and labor officials...which really means excluding ourselves, as they still had a bigger following among working people? Nonsensical.

Is that how you decide "who to exclude"? If some group has a "mass following" among workers, then "they're in"?

No matter what their politics???

Yes, that's the primary criterion.

Like I said before, if the decision was made on the basis of politics, communists would be working with no-one but ourselves.



The movement may not have been for sale, be he was. *laughs*

Bubba, nothing an individual does decades later can erase all the positive contributions they ever made. That's part of the Stalinist tradition too: airbrushing people out of the photos, publishing lists of "counterrevolutionary maggots" and so forth.




For me, the workers' movement is just that. It involves actual workers, and their organizations, whatever I may think of the leadership. If middle-class leftist groups are included, it's because they still have some relationship to the workers organizations.

Ok, there's nothing intrinsically "wrong" with a purely pragmatic definition...but there are certainly logical consequences of that view. When you try to analyze the existing trade unions (in the United States) "as a movement", you're in trouble. They don't act like one. At all!

In fact, the leaders most closely resemble a "temp agency"...renting out collective labor power and raking off a commission.

One more time: the union is the membership.

But thanks for the clarification: if Redstar says, the workers' movement, he's not talking about actual workers or their organizations.



For you, it seems to mean something else, defined in ideological not class terms. "Communism is not a doctrine but a MOVEMENT; it proceeds not from principles but from FACTS..... Communism, insofar as it is a theory, is the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat in this struggle, and the theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat." Remember? The class and the class struggle come first, ideology is just a reflection of that.

There have certainly been times when that would have been a pretty good description...and I expect those times to come again.

Like you said before: it all comes down to what kind of movement you want to build.

Christ. Something can be the expression of workers' struggle at some times, but not others? If something's become divorced from the working class - as the middle-class left definitely has - it's not likely to become the expression of workers' interests in the future.

I'd say you just confirmed my point. What you call "communism" is NOT in reality the expression of the workers' struggle.

Communism is not an ideology, a doctrine, a vision, or a plan for a future society. It is the expression of the struggle of the working class, in the present, or it is nothing. It's theory is the generalization of the experience of past struggle, guiding that present struggle, or it is not communist theory. Its perspective on the future is a continuation of the line of march of the working class through those past and present struggles, or it is not a communist view on that future.

And it's the expression of the world class struggle, not that in the U.S. or any one country, or it is not communism. (Though of course we engage in the class struggle as it exists in a particular time and place, on a particular national terrain.) As the Manifesto says:

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:

(1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

That's what distinguishes and defines communists. That's all. Not militancy, not radicalism, not a willingness to confront the ruling class, not super-revolutionary rhetoric, or anything like that. Those qualities - and everything else - are only good when, and to the extent that, they advance the line of march of the working class.

("line of march" being short for all the stuff in that Manifesto quote.)

If your view of the state of the class struggle was true, communism would be impossible. Fortunately, it's not: from outside the working class or from the sidelines of the struggles that are taking place today, it's impossible to accurately evaluate them.



I think that it's a good principle to follow because I don't see anything to be gained by alliances with the class enemy (or portions thereof) in the advanced capitalist countries.

It's not a hypothetical question. The historical fact is a great deal was gained by holding common actions with forces that supported capitalism but opposed the war. (Opposed the war in Vietnam while it was going on, consider the difference between that and the behavior of liberals and pacifists in earlier - and often later - wars.)

Coalitions like the SMC and NPAC gained, while the liberal Moratorium group, for example, soon dissolved. One side of the alliance knew exactly what it wanted and how to get it, while the other was forced into it under pressure. As one might expect under the circumstances, the "immediate withdrawal" forces were better able to use the liberals than vice versa.

Of course, if you walk into an alliance without clarity and unity on your side of the alliance first, you're likely to get used. Or if you bend to their politics - which is why it's accurately said that sectarians are afraid of their own suppressed desire to become opportunists.

Under those conditions, your alliance partner may well suck you dry and cast you aside.

Which is precisely what happened to the liberals in this case.

The only rational response to this gain in strength might be: Yes, you gained in numbers, but at the expense of your principles.

But that's not the case here, you've already admitted the coalitions' didn't drop or change their positions...which, you've also admitted, were objectively anti-imperialist demands.



In the semi-capitalist countries, it may make sense to work with "progressive bourgeois elements"...if you can find some.

You can't, as I've explained to you before. Consider Vietnam: the Stalinists spent decades looking for a "national bourgeoisie", the NLF was nominally a coalition with them....but really included no significant capitalist forces. The capitalist class - worldwide - is wholly reactionary.

And if you walk into an alliance thinking the bourgeois elements involved are progressive...see above, re sucked dry and cast aside. The Iraqi Communist Party and the Ba'athists are a good example of mistakes to avoid. The July 26th movement, and bourgeois opponents of Batista (like Socarras Prio to name one of the worst), are an example of good tactics.



I see. What a "principled" basis for action...it depends on how mad you are.
It's the same thing that often motivates a wildcat strike. "How mad you are" is a perfectly legitimate basis for taking an unusual action...up to and including revolution itself.

Only if you're fighting to lose.

Lose your temper in the ring, wake up on the canvas.

*It occurs to me that Workers' World, then, is the perfect example of an ironic phenomenon I mentioned earlier in response to Flyby: a group that bitterly opposed - even physically - the SWP's tactics at the time, then imitated them in later decades...without the underlying proletarian orientation, and at a time when that orientation would no longer call for the same tactics or priorities.

[Severian]

I'm going to repost a couple of posts which were lost in the board crash. They were responses to Redstar...that's his stuff in the quote brackets.


(Severian)
And this example brings up one of the points of tension between proletarian dictatorship and workers' democracy: who decides what's the class enemy and what's a disagreement withing the working class?


(Redstar)Well, at least in the eyes of this ultra-leftist, "everyone" decides except that the old ruling class and its lackeys don't get a vote.
Circular reasoning. Your answer contains the question.

Who decides who's a lackey of the ruling class?

Seems to me that social-democrats are, and often other leftists. But labor lieutenant of the capitalist class does not equal capitalist class.

Which is why the Bolsheviks didn't ban the Mensheviks, SRs, etc until they took up arms against the Soviet government.

If one were to take your criteria and draw the logical conclusion, they woulda.

You seem to be taking back, when it comes to brass tacks, a correct statement you once made in abstract principle: that the dictatorship of the proletariat should not be used as a weapon in disagreements within the working class.

Whatever a tendency does out of power, it'll do even more once in power.



I think, for example, that ruling class politicians are part of the class enemy by definition.

Sure, but Co-Aim, PL, etc weren't going around attacking George McGovern, or Lindsay, or whoever, wherever they went: they were attacking antiwar rallies that invited them, or union officials. The attack was against the antiwar movement, not against those politicians.



Well, there are a fair number of workers who are involved in or at least support groups that combine Christian Fascism and a sort of populist neo-protectionism...would you include them as a legitimate part of "the workers' movement"?

The workers, yes; the groups no.

I mean, if somebody at work has right-wing ideas or supports one of these groups, you still gotta treat him/her as a union brother/sister, if possible. Otherwise you isolate yourself, not the rightists.

As for working with fascist groups, no, I'm definitely not for that.

Really, the SWP is becoming unusual on the left in holding solidly to that position; others are often not particularly concerned about joining protectionist or peace rallies which also include a Buchananite contingent.

Composition of the membership is not the only criterion. (Incidentally, most fascist, or other ultrarightist, groups are not all that working-class in membership as far as I can tell. That seems to be more of a middle-class liberal preconception: those people are ignorant inbred rednecks, not like us superior well-educated people. It's even claimed by some that the German Nazis had a major working-class following, which is clearly contrary to fact.)




"Counter-revolutionary maggots"? That's a good one; I'll have to remember that one for later use. laugh.gif

Comes from one faction of the Panthers, which IIRC published lists of the expelled under that heading.



Actually, I'm treating Camajo in the same way you treated Hayden. Decades of "bad politics" do tend to overshadow early "positive contributions".

Eh...no. I cited something from 3 years later, not decades later...'cause I lack detailed information on his activities in every year. I'm just not convinced by anything you said about Hayden's alleged revolutionary character in '65, for reasons I gave earlier. If anything, since he became more confrontationist during that period, and you seem to regard that as some kind of good in itself...shouldn't you say he moved left?





One more time: the union is the membership.

Idealist. The "union" is what it does.

What who does, the bureaucracy, or the membership? You say the former, I say the latter.



Well, you want to argue the opposite position? Where are the working class communists in the U.S.? I agree, they exist in Europe...but where are ours?


In the SWP, for starters.



Then, by your definition, it's nothing.

The Manifesto's definition, not just mine.



[QUOTE] (The Communist Manifesto)
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:

(1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.


When those words were written, those were goals...not a description of reality.

BS. Communists of that time, like today, acted on that basis. It's not such an incredibly hard basis to act on....if you want to.



They were excellent goals and fully worthy of striving to achieve...and still are.


Yeah, see, that's a utopian socialist approach. We're striving to achieve these excellent goals....have been for over a hundred years....someday we will. Utopian.





That's what distinguishes and defines communists. That's all. Not militancy, not radicalism, not a willingness to confront the ruling class, not super-revolutionary rhetoric, or anything like that. Those qualities - and everything else - are only good when, and to the extent that, they advance the line of march of the working class.


Well, the working class in the U.S. has mostly been marching backwards for the last half-century -- that's a fact.

Living struggles go through period of retreat as well as advance, so God only knows why you think this is a counterargument.

But it's not a fact. The working class is retreating now, and has been for a while...but uninterrupted for a half-century? BS.

The class struggle had to take a detour around one of its main routes, the organized working class....due to the roadblock posed by the strength of the labor bureaucracy during a prolonged period of capitalist prosperity. But, it was able to advance nevertheless.

First, the civil rights movement, a movement of workers mostly, which dealt some heavy blows against divisions enforced on our class. Later, movements of Chicanos and other oppressed nationalities, mostly proletarian in character.

The antiwar and women's movements were more middle-class in composition, but advanced the interests of the workers and and reflected a growing discontent in the working class. By the late 70s, a recovery in union struggles themselves was evident.

Clearly, our class gained ground in the 60s and 70s...one cannot reasonably say it was retreating. The advance just took an atypical route.



We in SDS concluded that "the forward march" would have to be done by us


In other words, you declared themselves the vanguard and attempted to substitute for the masses. Exactly what you are always mistakenly accusing Leninists of doing.






The historical fact is a great deal was gained by holding common actions with forces that supported capitalism but opposed the war.


Bah! What was "gained"?


I just said. If you choose to ignore it, discussions tend to go around in circles. Certainly you'll never learn anything that way.



The U.S. pulled out because its own army was becoming unreliable.


Indeed...Halstead describes the disintegration in detail, and the SWP looked to this possibility, and advocated a strategy aimed at hastening it, all along. As I've said earlier.

U.S. military morale collapsed, under the impact of the Vietnamese revolution, first and most, and the antiwar movement, second.

Which convinced more and more young men, even before they went over, that the war was not worth fighting.

That's all about influencing mass opinion, exactly what the confrontationists disdained in favor of small street fights which they hoped would radicalize a handful.

Note as well that it was the SWP, before and more than any other group, which refused to write off the ranks of the army as hopelessly pro-war, and sought to do political work among working people in uniform.



Bourgeois liberalism had nothing to do with the matter.


But the antiwar movement sure did - see above - and inviting bourgeois liberals, as well as union officials, helped build it. As I explained, last post.

There's been a lot of talk in this thread about supporting the NLF.

Well, Hanoi and the NLF knew who was actually aiding them. They sent a number of messages to U.S. antiwar groups, wrote articles in their publications, etc., to make it clear what they thought.

Despite their political problems, they were actually fighting a war against U.S. imperialism, and knew who was helping them by making it harder for Uncle Sam to continue or escalate that war. They clearly regarded as very important, the mass demonstrations you deride. They repeatedly endorsed, the immediate withdrawal slogans some label "liberal." I may quote some of this later.

They even interceded to get NPAC invited to the Moscow-oriented World Peace Congress...which otherwise would have excluded it as "Trotskyite". This is not because Hanoi had a less hostile attitude towards "Trotskyites", or even groups influenced by 'em. It is because they knew NPAC was an important part of the movement in the U.S. which was interfering with Washington's war plans.

If they thought any of the NLF flag-wavers or "ho, ho, chi minh" chanters were significant enough to notice, let alone invite, I never heard about it.

[Severian]

Restoring another lost post:
The quote tag ain't working for me for some reason, so I'm using bold instead.

Redstar wrote:

It seems to me that you are taking this thread further and further away from the original topic...but I will try to follow as best I can.

There's a pretty limited amount to say about the original topic - SDS and the antiwar movement - given that SDS was in reality peripheral to the antiwar movement, and wasn't even in existence during the movement's peak years, 1970-71. I think it's been pretty much exhausted. We're also getting into some of those questions of what kind of movement do you wanna build.

The working class in Russia was a small minority of the total population -- I believe, if memory serves me, that the country was 80% peasants.

I don't think this has much relevance to a proletarian revolution in a country where the working class is in the overwhelming majority.

uh....seems to me that difference should mean less repression, not more. Seeing as how many of the things the Bolsheviks did were unfortunately necessities forced by their difficult situation in such a backward country.

If we had a more examples of revolutions in advanced capitalist countries, I'd be happy to refer to 'em; but I'm not willing to abandon real-life examples for a priori speculation.

By "lackeys of the capitalist class", I'm not referring to a generic group but rather to those identifiable individuals who directly served as agents of the enemy class...such as, for example, all bourgeois liberal politicians and (most? nearly all?) trade union bureaucrats.

Both of which are generic groups. But anyway.

See, bourgeois liberal politicians are not agents of the enemy class.

They are part to the enemy class.

You're muddying things up.

The trade union bureaucracy, on the other hand, is an agency of the ruling class. Usually not in the sense of paid agent, like a FBI agent. Rather, they're a petty-bourgeois transmission belt for capitalist influence into the workers' movement. So are social-democratic and Stalinist parties. Labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, in a handy phrase which DeLeon coined IIRC.

You can't seriously deny that the Mensheviks and SR parties were acting as agencies of the bourgeoisie - though you could argue they were correct to do so, given your views on the capitalists as "natural" rulers under the circumstances.

The thing is, though, that these are agencies of the capitalist class in the labor movement, constitute part of the workers' movement, and must be stripped of their following among workers by political not police or goon-squad methods.

Assuming you intend to convince workers, and not, Shining Path-like, to compel them.

I don't think that's true...but since neither of us will be around to see how things turn out, I don't see how such a disagreement could be resolved.

Seems to me it already has been: if a tendency approves of goon-squad methods even before taking power, it will do so even more afterwards.

Naturally, you would interpret it that way. But is it not at least equally possible that those who attacked liberal politicians at anti-war demonstrations did so precisely because they disputed their right to speak to that audience?

Clearly that's the case. Which necessarily means disputing the right of that audience, the antiwar movement, to invite and hear them. You've only rephrased what I said.

And let's get back to ground-level reality: the people the ultralefts were in fact attacking were antiwar demonstrators; they never harmed a hair on George McGovern's or Victor Reuther's head.

What'd VMC say, "As far as I'm concerned, when our supposed allies in struggle behave as though they are our enemies, there is no reason to treat them any differently." Just so, truer than he probably intended. If somebody is trying to bash me over the head with a flagpole, I don't care whether it's the Stars and Stripes, the swastika, or the NLF flag attached to it.

I'll bet you didn't even trash them after they spoke; I'll bet no one from the SWP who followed a bourgeois liberal to the microphone said words to the effect of "that bastard who just spoke is a turd; disregard every word he said!".

um, I just gave an example of a SWP speaker doing just that. Which you neatly ignored and dismissed with a snide reference to his later conduct.

But to suggest the gains that those movements made were "proletarian" in content seems to me to be really "stretching it".

Not just the gains; the movements themselves were proletarian. It's not coincidental, for example, that the decisive battle of the civil rights movement was fought in Birmingham, the industrial capital of the South. It was Black workers who won that battle, and it was leaders who relied on working-class support, like Shuttlesworth, who forced King to carry it through to victory despite pressure from Kennedy to call of the demonstrations.

Earlier, it was E.D. Nixon of the Sleeping Car Porters who initiated the Montgomery bus boycott struggle...and decided it would be a good idea to get some preacher to front it, maybe that young preacher King would do a decent job.

Etc.

Not surprising as the nationalities in question are so heavily working-class in composition.

As for the gains, clearly they benefited workers, helping to overcome divisions and expand political space, especially in the South; can you disagree?


Well, if you say so. I lived through those years and I didn't notice any startling improvements or any abrupt changes for "the better".

Which says more about you than about those years. As we've already seen with the antiwar movement, you don't notice much because you live in a hole...a hole in your head. You didn't notice the '77-78 miners strike, for example? Taft can mine it, Hartley can haul it, and Carter can shove it?

In fact, it was during the 70s that I started to notice a decline...or at lease a cessation of the "every year will get a little better" phenomenon.

Yeah, certainly there was a decline in capitalist prosperity...which makes possible a break in the conservatism of the labor movement. The "'every year will get a little better' phenomenon" was precisely one of the factors making possible the post-WWII housebreaking of the labor movement.

And the retreat of the labor movement did begin by the end of the 70s, if one dates if from the '79 Chrysler bailout as I tend to...

We "declared" no such thing...

You just did. "We in SDS concluded that "the forward march" would have to be done by us". Earlier you said that you considered yourselves and your (rather narrow BTW) constituency to be the mass movement.

Sounds to me exactly like declaring SDS the vanguard, or worse, the whole movement.

I see...the SWP "gets the credit" for convincing young men that the war was "not worth fighting". The daily bad news from the front had nothing to do with it.

One more time, the antiwar movement, not just the SWP.

No, casualties alone did not produce that result. Though as I've said many times: the Vietnamese were primary, the antiwar movement was secondary.

The U.S. army was capable of taking many more casualties...as long as most soldiers believed in the justifications for war.

When they wholly cease to do so, a soldiers' tendency to fight in order to keep himself and his buddies alive...becomes the opposite, an effort to keep the unit out of combat.

More than a handful, I think the record would show.

Relative to the millions who joined antiwar actions, and the whole generation which had to be influenced in order to have an effect within the army: a handful.

I did a little googling on this subject...and it sort of looks as if anti-war pacifist types were the most active in this arena of work.

Oh, they were active. In encouraging individual draft refusal, conscientious objectiong, refusal to go to Vietnam, etc. Assorted ways of saving one's own soul. Which is the opposite of trying to influence the army in Vietnam. A downright obstacle to it.

Never heard of GIs United Against the War, or the Fort Jackson 8? Hiding in that hole in your head again?

Very little, actually.

BS. Support to the NLF has been held up throughout as the supposedly revolutionary alternative to the supposedly liberal SWP line of immediate withdrawal.

As you put it "It may be a subtle distinction -- was not your slogan "Bring the Troops Home Now"?

Ours was "No Negotiations -- U.S. Get Out Now!"

And even, "Victory to the NLF!""

Also Shadow, and most of all Flyby.

So who actually helped bring about the victory of the Vietnamese revolution? What did Hanoi and the NLF think? It's a natural question, and the answer is: they recognized the aid which the mass antiwar actions were giving them. Nice to have you admit: "Yes, that's true."

Seems to me that's one fundamental obligation of revolutionaries: to aid revolutions in other countries. It's called internationalism. You were commenting on the Vietnamese Stalinists' unsurprising lack of it...but look in the mirror a little, ya might see the same.

(Out of order):
No, that's a false distinction in my view

Heh. It's a distinction you use all the time. You play up the class-collaborationist actions of the bureaucracy, in order to argue the unions aren't workers organizations. In contrast, you ignore or dismiss fighting actions by the ranks. So you use the same distinction I do, just in the opposite way.

I, on the other hand, don't expect anything good from the bureaucracy to start with, so I'm focused on what the ranks are doing, the local fightbacks that are going on and the attempts to link them up.

As the Manifesto says, "Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers."

[redstar2000]

Restored Posts



And this example brings up one of the points of tension between proletarian dictatorship and workers' democracy: who decides what's the class enemy and what's a disagreement withing the working class?

Well, at least in the eyes of this ultra-leftist, "everyone" decides except that the old ruling class and its lackeys don't get a vote.

Or even a voice.

I think, for example, that ruling class politicians are part of the class enemy by definition.

Some might disagree with me or say that "most are...but this one isn't".

And we'd struggle over that bone of contention. Eventually, there'd be a clear winner and a clear loser...though the issue might come up over and over again.

I think time "is on my side" on this one...but the struggle continues.


Under Stalinism, all disagreement is typically labeled pro-capitalist.

Indeed it was...often without a shred of justification or evidence. (Note that "dialectics" was very useful in Stalinist polemics -- "left in form; right in content" was a phrase that was used frequently.)

In my opinion, pro-capitalist ideas do resurface time and time again even among people who are sincerely committed to revolutionary politics. Those ideas do need to be struggled against...openly and in a principled way. Real evidence and arguments must be provided.

Nevertheless, lines must be drawn...if you don't do that, then things get hopelessly muddled. And you end up with "anarchists for Kerry" and "marxists for imperialism".


Yes, that's the primary criterion.

Like I said before, if the decision was made on the basis of politics, communists would be working with no-one but ourselves.

Well, there are a fair number of workers who are involved in or at least support groups that combine Christian Fascism and a sort of populist neo-protectionism...would you include them as a legitimate part of "the workers' movement"?


...nothing an individual does decades later can erase all the positive contributions they ever made. That's part of the Stalinist tradition too: airbrushing people out of the photos, publishing lists of "counterrevolutionary maggots" and so forth.

"Counter-revolutionary maggots"? That's a good one; I'll have to remember that one for later use. *laughs*

Actually, I'm treating Camajo in the same way you treated Hayden. Decades of "bad politics" do tend to overshadow early "positive contributions".

I don't think that's "Stalinist"...it's just human.

You know...what have you done for me lately?


One more time: the union is the membership.

Idealist. The "union" is what it does.

It ain't the name that determines social identity, it's the social practice.

Lots of workers are members of the Catholic Church; that doesn't make the church a union.


But thanks for the clarification: if Redstar says, the workers' movement, he's not talking about actual workers or their organizations.

Maybe, maybe not. What I will be talking about when I use the phrase "the workers' movement" are those particular workers and those particular organizations that act like a workers' movement.

It is most unlikely that I will be using the phrase anytime soon with regard to the United States...we don't have one.


Something can be the expression of workers' struggle at some times, but not others?

Off hand, I don't see why not.


What you call "communism" is NOT in reality the expression of the workers' struggle.

Well, you want to argue the opposite position? Where are the working class communists in the U.S.? I agree, they exist in Europe...but where are ours?

Communism in North America is the ideology of a small number of intellectuals...and that's about it. They probably number less than 5,000 people...in a country of nearly 300,000,000.


Communism is not an ideology, a doctrine, a vision, or a plan for a future society. It is the expression of the struggle of the working class, in the present, or it is nothing. -- emphasis added.

Then, by your definition, it's nothing.

What else can you reasonably conclude?


Its theory is the generalization of the experience of past struggle, guiding that present struggle, or it is not communist theory.

We "guide" nothing.


Its perspective on the future is a continuation of the line of march of the working class through those past and present struggles, or it is not a communist view on that future.

There is nothing left to "continue" save a small number of tiny Leninist museums and their curators.

We are at zero in the present period. All we have to build on are Marx's ideas and a lengthy list of other ideas that didn't work.


Originally posted by The Communist Manifesto
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:

(1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

When those words were written, those were goals...not a description of reality.

They were excellent goals and fully worthy of striving to achieve...and still are.

But to speak as if they have been achieved is just fantasy -- especially in the United States.


That's what distinguishes and defines communists. That's all. Not militancy, not radicalism, not a willingness to confront the ruling class, not super-revolutionary rhetoric, or anything like that. Those qualities - and everything else - are only good when, and to the extent that, they advance the line of march of the working class.

Well, the working class in the U.S. has mostly been marching backwards for the last half-century -- that's a fact.

We in SDS concluded that "the forward march" would have to be done by us...and we (or at least some of us) hoped this would awaken the working class to its historic tasks.

We were not successful in that regard...but we tried. So did the SWP and a lot of other groups...with no more lasting success to show for their efforts than we had.

I certainly expect that there will be future groups that will do a lot better than we did; but I'm convinced that they will have to build a resistance to the despotism of capital that is even more radically intransigent than we in SDS were.

There's just no hope in any other course.


If your view of the state of the class struggle was true, communism would be impossible.

Communism is "impossible" until the working class itself becomes communist.

That is not happening yet...if it were, it would show!


The historical fact is a great deal was gained by holding common actions with forces that supported capitalism but opposed the war.

Bah! What was "gained"?

The U.S. pulled out because its own army was becoming unreliable.

Bourgeois liberalism had nothing to do with the matter.


Only if you're fighting to lose.

Lose your temper in the ring, wake up on the canvas.

Probably true. Fortunately, revolutions are not "like" boxing matches. We Americans do love our sports metaphors and use them constantly...and almost always inappropriately.
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It seems to me that you are taking this thread further and further away from the original topic...but I will try to follow as best I can.


Which is why the Bolsheviks didn't ban the Mensheviks, SRs, etc until they took up arms against the Soviet government.

If one were to take your criteria and draw the logical conclusion, they woulda.

The working class in Russia was a small minority of the total population -- I believe, if memory serves me, that the country was 80% peasants.

I don't think this has much relevance to a proletarian revolution in a country where the working class is in the overwhelming majority.

By "lackeys of the capitalist class", I'm not referring to a generic group but rather to those identifiable individuals who directly served as agents of the enemy class...such as, for example, all bourgeois liberal politicians and (most? nearly all?) trade union bureaucrats.


You seem to be taking back, when it comes to brass tacks, a correct statement you once made in abstract principle: that the dictatorship of the proletariat should not be used as a weapon in disagreements within the working class.

I don't think that's true...but since neither of us will be around to see how things turn out, I don't see how such a disagreement could be resolved.


The attack was against the antiwar movement, not against those politicians.

Naturally, you would interpret it that way. But is it not at least equally possible that those who attacked liberal politicians at anti-war demonstrations did so precisely because they disputed their right to speak to that audience?

After all, what has been the historical fate of rebellious or potentially rebellious movements in capitalist countries? They get co-opted by bourgeois liberal reformists. It's happened so many times that bourgeois sociologists think it's a kind of "law".

You may disapprove of ultra-leftist efforts to stop that from happening by shouting them down or running them out of "left" gatherings; you may not think that's "the best way" to handle the problem.

But how does it help matters when groups like the SWP invite those counter-revolutionary maggots to speak?

Why do you want to give them a platform for their dirty work?

I'll bet you didn't even trash them after they spoke; I'll bet no one from the SWP who followed a bourgeois liberal to the microphone said words to the effect of "that bastard who just spoke is a turd; disregard every word he said!".

The more I think about it, the more I find the SWP's version of an "anti-war movement" simply incomprehensible.


I mean, if somebody at work has right-wing ideas or supports one of these groups, you still gotta treat him/her as a union brother/sister, if possible.

I didn't. In fact, in the places where I worked, I baited and taunted right-wingers frequently. Of course, I did have an advantage...most of my co-workers were "friendly" to left ideas and thought right-wingers were nutballs or worse.

And yeah, the righties would go whining to the boss and I'd catch an occasional reprimand and, in one place, I got fired.

That's life.


Incidentally, most fascist, or other ultrarightist, groups are not all that working-class in membership as far as I can tell. That seems to be more of a middle-class liberal preconception: those people are ignorant inbred rednecks, not like us superior well-educated people. It's even claimed by some that the German Nazis had a major working-class following, which is clearly contrary to fact.

There may be something to what you say. The German Nazis did get some support from the working class...but I think it came mostly from towns and small cities where even social democracy was weak. In the U.S. at present, I think that a worker in Texas would be much more likely to be sympathetic to a Christian fascist viewpoint than a worker in San Francisco. But we really have no data to work with on a question like this.


What who does, the bureaucracy, or the membership? You say the former, I say the latter.

No, that's a false distinction in my view. A "union" is a real union only if it acts like one. If a rowdy membership forces the leadership into militant actions, fine. If a progressive leadership drags a passive membership into militant actions, also fine. The union is what it does.

A corrupt leadership and a passive membership "lose their certification" in my opinion.


The class struggle had to take a detour around one of its main routes, the organized working class....due to the roadblock posed by the strength of the labor bureaucracy during a prolonged period of capitalist prosperity. But, it was able to advance nevertheless.

???


First, the civil rights movement, a movement of workers mostly, which dealt some heavy blows against divisions enforced on our class. Later, movements of Chicanos and other oppressed nationalities, mostly proletarian in character.

No doubt the workers who were part of various oppressed ethnic/cultural minorities benefited indirectly from the assorted civil rights movements to one extent or another.

But to suggest the gains that those movements made were "proletarian" in content seems to me to be really "stretching it".


By the late 70s, a recovery in union struggles themselves was evident.

Clearly, our class gained ground in the 60s and 70s...one cannot reasonably say it was retreating. The advance just took an atypical route.

Well, if you say so. I lived through those years and I didn't notice any startling improvements or any abrupt changes for "the better".

In fact, it was during the 70s that I started to notice a decline...or at lease a cessation of the "every year will get a little better" phenomenon.


In other words, [SDS] declared themselves the vanguard and attempted to substitute for the masses. Exactly what you are always mistakenly accusing Leninists of doing.

We "declared" no such thing...although an argument could be made that by taking the initiative ourselves, we were acting "as if" we were a "vanguard party".

We never suggested, however, that we were appointed by history to rule the post-revolutionary society.

As to Leninist theory and practice, you know better.


Which convinced more and more young men, even before they went over, that the war was not worth fighting.

I see...the SWP "gets the credit" for convincing young men that the war was "not worth fighting". The daily bad news from the front had nothing to do with it.

Ooookay.


That's all about influencing mass opinion, exactly what the confrontationists disdained in favor of small street fights which they hoped would radicalize a handful.

More than a handful, I think the record would show.


Note as well that it was the SWP, before and more than any other group, which refused to write off the ranks of the army as hopelessly pro-war, and sought to do political work among working people in uniform.

I did a little googling on this subject...and it sort of looks as if anti-war pacifist types were the most active in this arena of work.

Now and then I would run into an anti-war vet...but I just treated them like everybody else I would meet in movement circles.

I did know one ex-SDSer who was very active in this area...unfortunately, he had become a cop after the collapse of SDS -- and caused real problems for people in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.


There's been a lot of talk in this thread about supporting the NLF.

Very little, actually.


Despite their political problems, they were actually fighting a war against U.S. imperialism, and knew who was helping them by making it harder for Uncle Sam to continue or escalate that war. They clearly regarded as very important, the mass demonstrations you deride. They repeatedly endorsed, the immediate withdrawal slogans some label "liberal."

Yes, that's true. They were "focused" -- to the point where when asked about their views of May 1968 in Paris, they responded that they hoped whatever happened would not interfere with the negotiations (about the shape of the table, as I recall).


If they thought any of the NLF flag-wavers or "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh" chanters were significant enough to notice, let alone invite, I never heard about it.

Neither did I...they never invited me or anyone I knew.
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There's a pretty limited amount to say about the original topic - SDS and the antiwar movement - given that SDS was in reality peripheral to the antiwar movement, and wasn't even in existence during the movement's peak years, 1970-71.

Actually, the original topic was the "legacy" of SDS...you have emphasized the anti-war movement because the SWP didn't, evidently, do much else.

Yes, we were certainly "peripheral" to your ritual demonstrations as you were peripheral to our confrontations.

And sure, you can take as much credit as you like for your "effectiveness" and your "invitations from Hanoi", etc....if it makes you feel better.

I was there and saw a very different picture...and others will decide to what extent our respective views are relevant to the present day.

Note that the SWP approach is dominant now in groups like ANSWER and NION, etc. And since you have, at present, no "SDS ultra-leftists" to contend with, you have a perfect opportunity to demonstrate your "effectiveness" without fear of being attacked by SDS "goons" or undermined by "SDS crazies".

We'll see how you do.


You just did. "We in SDS concluded that "the forward march" would have to be done by us". Earlier you said that you considered yourselves and your (rather narrow BTW) constituency to be the mass movement.

Sounds to me exactly like declaring SDS the vanguard, or worse, the whole movement.

"The whole movement" among white students is closer to the mark; many of us thought of SDS as a natural counter-part to the Black Panthers and other ethnic/cultural groups that raised revolutionary perspectives in their various constituencies.

Trying to pin the "vanguard" label on us is really fruitless...we simply did not think in those terms. Only after SDS disintegrated did some ex-SDSers move on to "vanguard" politics.
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I gotta say if SDS was important in some other respect, you haven't done a particularly good job of explaining how. Or on the local or campus actions, given any detailed firsthand account of any of those actions. That might actually give some value to your having been there; instead you've just used it for an "argument from authority".

Well, compared to you, I am an "authority"...though very far from an "ultimate authority". You are working from a text by Fred Halstead -- someone who had a line very different from SDS and who therefore painted SDS in, shall we say, "less than glowing" colors.

A "Stalinist" is not expected (by grownups) to write a particularly reliable account of "Trotskyism" or vice versa.

Likewise, one who advocates a coalition with liberal politicians is not going to look kindly upon others who advocated a fairly forceful confrontation with bourgeois liberalism.

In my opinion, the SWP wanted us to be foot-soldiers for their coalitions...and never forgave us for flatly refusing to do that.

What seems to particularly irritate you is that there seems to be some interest in SDS now...while interest is lagging in the kind of ceremonial demonstrations which the SWP once championed.

I think discontent with ritual opposition to the war in Iraq is stirring...and that's reflected in an emerging interest in SDS's historical achievements, limited though they certainly were.

What we did -- in our "anarchic" fashion -- was shock the whole country with the actual presence of an intransigent opposition "to the American way".

All of it.

I'm not sure even the CPUSA at its "height" actually did that much (though it did other admirable things, of course). Perhaps you'd have to go all the way back to the IWW itself to find a comparable impact.

Of course, we failed. Nearly all revolutionary efforts fail.

And yet, we were the last people to even raise the possibility in the United States...however "unrealistic" we might have been in that regard.

That is something that no "historians" can take away from us.
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http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2005, 06:51 PM
"The whole movement" among white students is closer to the mark; many of us thought of SDS as a natural counter-part to the Black Panthers and other ethnic/cultural groups that raised revolutionary perspectives in their various constituencies.
Yeah...the term for that is..."polyvanguardism."


What we did -- in our "anarchic" fashion -- was shock the whole country with the actual presence of an intransigent opposition "to the American way".

Yeah, yeah, epater les bourgeois.

[romanm]

Just a comment.

There is a whole new industry of law enforcement technology geared toward limiting protests to unconfrontational affairs. Protest zones and Pens are there to prevent anything like confrontational protests. What are the SWP supporters's view of these technologies? Do you see them as ways to keep the protests orderly and in the hands of the organizers?

[flyby]

there is a problem with reducing one tactic to the sole measure of politics and resistance. In a way that was startlingly blindered (and rigid in ways i won't even start to describe) the SWP insisted that ONLY large, peaceful, scrupulously legal mass rallies were important in the struggle against the Vietnam war.

They opposed civil disobeidiance. They were disinterested in building by local actions. They did not appreciate the importance of Black rebellions (as a major engine of the time and the revolutionary climate). They opposed and denounced militant actions that produced conflicts with police ((even when those action were themselves mass events that involved ten thousand people and more -- like the famous battle in front of the Justice Department in Washington, or the attempt to take the Vietnamese embassy at Dupont circle in the Fall of 1969).

They were focused in a funnel on their one prefered tactic.

And, of course, it was important to have large actions that could draw in large numbers of people, including those new to political life -- especially when those actions were around demands that were clear, just and pionted at the crimes of the system (Like the demand to "end the war now.")

But turning a tactic into a strategy is, in fact to abandon higher politics, and to make the resistance conform to modes of thought and action that were fundamentally acceptable to major parts of the system.

There was, alongside the need for mass marches, also a need for open internationalist support for the Vietnamese national liberation struggle, a need for open discussion of revolution as a necessity and a goal. There was a need to form a new revolutionary communist movement, and to sink the roots of that movement deep among oppressed peoples and communities. There was a need for outbreaks of radical art, theater, film, poetry, fiction, music.... and an explosion of rebel expression throughout the superstructure. There was a need for debate and experimentation around intimate and personal relationships -- especially to break with the suffocating reactionary "sex roles" of traditional American values, and particularly the male supremacy that was in the very air people breathed.

A revolutionary movement needs all this -- not just one tactic or one focus -- and that was the conflict that many in SDS, and especially those who were becoming Maoists and communists, had with SWP.

And the lessons and issues of all this are, of course, urgent today too. For reasons that I don't need to list here.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2005, 12:00 PM
Just a comment.

There is a whole new industry of law enforcement technology geared toward limiting protests to unconfrontational affairs. Protest zones and Pens are there to prevent anything like confrontational protests. What are the SWP supporters's view of these technologies? Do you see them as ways to keep the protests orderly and in the hands of the organizers?
No, that's a police tactic. A tactic of the enemy class.

How to respond to that is a tactical problem for our class.....at one KKK rally and anti-KKK protest I was at, it definitely seemed best to stay out of the pen, which could easily have become a bloody trap if the cops chose.

***
Flyby's latest is an attempt to obscure the real issues, as well as falsify history. The SWP was never married to one tactic. It helped build local demonstrations, student strikes, etc. Did a lot of GI organizing and GI constitutional rights work, which required special tactics. If you read Out Now, it describes a great number of tactics used by antiwar activists.

Nor was it committed solely to antiwar activity. I recently picked up a bound volume of the Militant for the first half of 1970 - during the height of the antiwar movement. It's full of stuff about Black Liberations, Chicano Liberation, Women's Liberation actions, events in the Middle East like the rising Palestinian struggle, all kinds of stuff besides just Vietnam and antiwar demonstrations.

The SWP did stick to one strategy - a mass action strategy. That's because communists think "the emancipation of the working classes can only be the conquest of the working classes themselves," to quote Marx.

Civil disobedience, for example, was simply not going to help draw masses of people into action under those conditions. Or most others. Workers usually have enough trouble with the cops already without deliberately seeking to go to jail.

The SWP still has that proletarian strategic approach, though it places a much lower priority on the tactic of antiwar rallies in the current situation. This should suffice to show the distinction between Flyby's claim of one unvarying tactic, and the reality of a consistent strategic approach.


here was, alongside the need for mass marches, also a need for open internationalist support for the Vietnamese national liberation struggle, a need for open discussion of revolution as a necessity and a goal. There was a need to form a new revolutionary communist movement, and to sink the roots of that movement deep among oppressed peoples and communities.

And the SWP, in fact, did all that. Again, the Militant for 1970 is full of "open internationalist support for the Vietnamese national liberation struggle, a need for open discussion of revolution as a necessity and a goal." The SWP did this not only alongside the mass marches, but within them, and from the speakers' platform at them. What the SWP did not do, however, was try to limit those mass actions by imposing its full communist program on them, or turning them into pointless confrontations with the cops - which most workers have the good sense to stay away from.

Maoists at that time simply did not apply the approach Flyby is recommending now. Instead, they sought to impose confrontationist tactics, radical-sounding but empty declarations of support to the NLF, etc - onto those demonstrations.

Frankly, while the RCP has learned some things since that time, or perhaps is just too weakened to behave as outrageously as it once did, it still has some problems along those lines.