Kasama Interview: The Radical Politics of Today’s SDS

[leftclick]

Zerohour conducted a Kasama interview with Freddy B. shortly after the recent SDS Convention. Freddy is an activist within SDS, a blogger with Good Morning Revolution and has been a participant of the Kasama project from its beginning.

Kasama: What are political questions you see posing themselves around SDS, both during the recent convention and into the future?

Freddy: I think some of the fault-lines are going to be questions over revolution itself.


A lot of SDS’ers define themselves as radicals or revolutionaries and people know what that means - social transformation, etc. But no one knows how that’s going to look like and there are a lot of political fault-lines around that.


People are arguing everything from armed revolution to peaceful movement or some sort of a cultural revolution - so those things are out there.


There are also going to be political divisions on questions of the class struggle in the United States. A lot of the people in SDS are in the IWW for example. It’s an organization that I like, but I don’t do work with it because I fundamentally don’t think the work it’s doing will solve the questions in our country, or worldwide.


At the convention, on Friday, there was an interactive workshop on class.


There was actually a lot of political stuff that went down there. There was a lot of challenging people upon what “class” meant, the question of “intersectionality” became part of it or in other workshops from what I know.


The question of “coordinator class” and Parecon by Michael Albert came up, which is a different sort of view. And there’s a lot of challenging based on ideology: like Marxist class analysis vs. identity politics vs. Parecon and just things like that.


Those sort of questions are going to come up.


Basically a lot of the political basis for discussion are going to be a lot of the fault-lines that are currently on the left. SDS is currently a grouping of young people that are influenced broadly by left-wing politics and are very eclectic but don’t have a real center.


Kasama: How do you think such political controversies will mature and resolve?


Freddy: I came out of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade [RCYB, the RCP's youth organization] and our view of organizing anything amongst youth was like: You put out the politics and they gravitate towards it. Or you go out to a high school and you sell the paper or something like that, organize a showing of something.

I don’t think that fundamentally that’s how SDS is going to work. I don’t think it’s good for organizing students.

SDS is an organization that is going to immanently come through its consciousness, like the leap of consciousness from the second convention to the third convention, or the first convention even.

The first convention was dominated was dominated by young crusty-punks.

The second convention was much different but yet you still had sort of like, “Well we don’t want a student organization on the level of a national office.” The structure that we even got was like “We’re going to stop everything before it happens,” you know. “We’re going to stop the PLP before it comes.” That way of thinking.

The third convention was just this huge turnaround where people were like “All the shit we said last year was just fucked up. It’s not how things fundamentally work.”

People started realizing that, and I think that’s the way politics is going to evolve in SDS for a while. These political debates come forth: These debates about how we’re going to organize, what view or vision we’re going to put forward, etc., and people are going to address them as they come forward.

There’s a place for putting something forward about Nepal for example. [editor: where there is a Maoist revolution struggling to seize power.]

But if you fundamentally take that character away from immanently going through the stages of consciousness amongst youth, then you’re not actually going to create revolutionary consciousness amongst them.

Kasama: How would you situate SDS in the context of the left?

Freddy: Well, what is “the left”? The left is such a diffuse, weak strain of things.

No one really relates to “the left” on the level of work besides projects like Iraq Moratorium or various environmental projects or whatever happens on a local level.

There are all these other student organizations like CAN [Campus Antiwar Network] for example. All these other student organizations, or youth organizations are pretty much (I don’t want to be bad about this) are led politically from centers. Like CAN is from the political center of ISO .

SDS is interesting in the sense that you had a call from a couple of high schoolers in 2006 and you had an explosion of movement without any centrally defined character to it. The people who put out that call were people from World Can’t Wait. It showed at a fundamental level young people wanting to define their own organization; young radicals wanting to find their own organization.

But I think that’s been fundamentally lacking in the left for a long, long time. You always have a center-defined group and you give character to its youth wing which is not a bad thing because you’re always going to have young people who agree with a particular party organization.

But the fact that there is no level of accessibility and discussions among young radicals themselves is fundamentally going to lead to the same sort of dichotomy and diffusion among the left itself, where you just have stupid splits like between the Troops Out Now Coalition and A.N.S.W.E.R. where they don’t meet together ever and they plan things out differently and it fucks up the anti-war movement.

So I think SDS’s relationship is one that’s basically critical of the left altogether about organizing the youth. It’s basically saying “Listen, we don’t need partisanship on that level. We need partisanship on the level of doing work in unity, on issues of the war, on issues of the environment, on issues of worker organizing.”

Struggling to build multi-racial organization

Kasama: This SDS convention, like the previous ones, debated important issues around racism, white supremacy and what it means to develop multi-racial organization. Can you tell us about that?

Freddy: There’s been a lot of struggle in the People of Color Caucus because what’s a “person of color”? That’s a fundamental question in the People of Color Caucus and I’m probably not the best person to talk about that since I’m not in the Caucus.

However I think it’s popping up because it’s really hard to define especially with bi-racial people. “Am I a person of color?” “What is national oppression?” “Does a white Puerto Rican person face national oppression in the United States” - that’s a question that’s always brought up. There’s been points when people who are Armenian joined the People of Color Caucus because Turkey carried out genocide against them.

I don’t think people have a fundamental answer yet. I think there are broadening questions around it.

Kasama: The original SDS was overwhelmingly white, because during the 1960s and later, there was a great deal of organization along separate lines, because of the influence of Black nationalist politics and groups like SNCC and the Panthers.

Freddy: Yeah, and you had third world Marxists. I think that kind of focus is going to define a lot of the character of student organizations altogether.
If you look at student groups now, you have a lot of Asian American student groups that are quite good in their politics. I’ll just name a few like NAASCon [National Asian American Students Convention].

For example. I have some differences with their worldview but a lot of people gravitate towards that because they address a lot of concerns of Asian Americans students and are really doing good work.

Here at Hunter College we have a similar grouping called CRAASH [Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter.]

I don’t think SDS wants to have this relationship of competition with political student organizations of people of color. We also don’t want to tail those groupings because sometimes they can put out really fucked up shit. Sometimes.

It’s a question of SDS wanting to build a multi-racial student organization. It doesn’t want to be just a white-bound student organization and there was a lot of discussion about that at the convention itself because people kept referring to SDS as a white organization, fundamentally ignoring all the people of color in this group that are here right now.

So I think that’s always going to fundamentally shape the character of any student organization just because there are plenty of groups around. But I think if you put forward a certain politics to people that are good, and by that I mean ones that express support for national liberation struggles, etc., I think we could get more support from people of color but I’m not sure about that exactly.

Kasama: What is the breakdown of nationalities within SDS now?

Freddy: I think there were only a few Black students at the whole convention. There were a lot more Latinos and Asians. There’s people of bi-raciality. I would like to say I’m one of them because I’m part Latino, part Italian — but I’m obviously white. I think a lot of people are like that in SDS. I think that’s the character of colleges altogether — more people of color are coming into colleges. I think this important because college can be in itself a radically transforming experience for oppressed peoples, and can turn them into organic radicals.

SDS, though, has still a national character that is bound to white culture and activist culture and I think it limits us to a certain extent.

Debate Over the Elections

Kasama: What were the campaigns the convention agreed upon?

Freddy: There were two different ideas proposed that had to deal with some level of work around the election coming up. Those two were: (1) one hundred days of pressure on Obama and social priorities, and (2) the other one was Protest McCain.

Basically these were two directions of trying to relate somehow to young people who are going to be disenfranchised with Obama.

However among SDS there is a certain level of people not knowing how to do that. Everyone agrees: Obama’s an imperialist. He’s not really anti-war. He’s just going to re-assert it in Afghanistan.

A lot of people know this but they don’t know how to define what sort of relationship they’re going to have to the presidential race.

They don’t want to have a character of typical bad ultra-leftism where “Elections are fucked up and we’re going to do our own thing and you’re just being fooled.” But I’m obviously not going to be involved in the campaign itself.

Those proposals both failed. It just showed the level of political disunity around the question and not knowing how to address the question altogether.

Kasama: So was it political or tactical disunity? You said they agreed that Obama was imperialist.

Freddy: There’s a certain amount of tactical disunity, and there’s politics involved here. The people with the “hundred days, social priorities” thing I felt were too soft on the Obama thing. It was so vague and open it gave the chapter the potential to do anything, which basically meant maybe they’ll go and support Obama, like who knew what that campaign proposal actually meant?

The Protest McCain one was really about “We’ll be on the streets protesting McCain’s imperialism and then we’ll show the contradictions to the Obama supporters with their candidate.” But then people thought that was too soft on Obama too.

So there was really no way of resolving it. People didn’t understand how to solve it and there were certain politics that were dividing line that said “what kind of relationship can we have with bourgeois electoral politics” so they don’t know.

Kasama: A proposal about accessible education did pass. What exactly is that? What did that proposal call for?

Freddy: Quite honestly it’s student syndicalist. I disagree with it. However, there’s a certain level of truth to it.

At Hunter College, for example, tuition issues are always going to arise and it’s something you should always step up and fight against. These issues of student debt in private schools are big issues, people are emerging out of college paying almost twenty years of student debt, which is ridiculous.

However I just fundamentally don’t see how that’s going to work out in the end because the student debt question, student tuition question is so big and frustrating because of the complexities of public school vs. private school, and private schooling just being a sprawling matter of arbitrariness of whatever school you’re at, so I fundamentally don’t see how it’s going to work on a national level.

But people want to do something about it. And it’s just going to happen on a local level I guess. People want the whole campaign proposal itself to be just giving a mandate allowing SDS’ers to work on it at a local level.

Basically, on the electoral thing: Neither side got a mandate to do whatever they want to on the local level in the name of national SDS, whereas the student accessible education one did get that mandate from the national student body.

It’s like “Yes, this is an issue facing students and we have to do something about it nationally.”

* * * * *

Kasama: Is there anything you want to say that I didn’t ask?

Freddy: Yes: Why should revolutionary communists join SDS?

Kasama: Well, why should they?

Freddy: I think you have here a mass organization that has rapidly taken on a radical consciousness nationally. I think you have here an organization and a form to address a larger, younger organization with revolutionary communist politics and change people’s views towards that aim. As I said before, a lot of people in SDS, the majority probably, define themselves as revolutionaries they just don’t know what that means or how that’s going to look, and that sort of vision’s lacking in SDS. it’s like we all agree: social transformation, anti-oppression, collective liberation, whatever they want to say it is - but they don’t know what that is effectively going to look like and how we’re going to do it. So we need that political leadership in SDS.

* * * * *

[I]This interview originally appeared on the website of the Kasama Project kasamaproject dot org

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

Why is Kasama trying to find relevance in an almost irrelevant student movement? There's like 15 maoists in SDS, it's rather silly at this point. Especially when you're denouncing student syndicalism, which is probably the only thing that SDS is doing that is relevant.

[leftclick]

Why is Kasama trying to find relevance in an almost irrelevant student movement? There's like 15 maoists in SDS, it's rather silly at this point. Especially when you're denouncing student syndicalism, which is probably the only thing that SDS is doing that is relevant.
It's natural for students to gravitate towards student syndicalism, after all, they're students and face genuine hardships. At the same time, there's also a desire to understand and transform the world that animates much student activism, even when focused on more immediate concerns. As Freddy pointed out, it's not that SDS should not fight for accesssible education but how it should - as an end in itself, or as part of a larger political strateygy and vision? If mobilized with a creative and energetic anti-imperialist politics that can address the various injustices and oppressions, student activism can play an important galvanizing role in national politics, and affect the momentum of other movements.

To dismiss SDS as irrelevant when they are struggling to develop a broad revoluiontary politics and building the forms to allow it to take expression is just cynical sectarianism. If they are not as far along as they could be, we should try to understand why that is and find ways to help them move forward, not point fingers and write them off. Very few projects start off big, and those few that do are often initiated by those with years of established ties and networks. SDS didn't starting from absolutely nothing, but they didn't have an overflowing Rolodex to rely on either.

As for Maoists' participation, let me make a couple of points. First of all, kasama is not a Maoist organization although it is a key part of our political framework. Many participants are Maoist, but many are not. We are organized around problematics, not settled lines, but we are committed to communism, revolution and internationalism. Secondly, it is wrong to evaluate the potential of an organization or movement based solely on how many of its members adhere to a strict ideology. The few Maoists who joined SDS did so when its politics were largely dominated by anarchism. As for their motivation, they should speak for themselves, but student movements are fluid and experimental, providing ways to challenge previously held orthodoxies while sometimes confirming long-tested insights.

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

It's natural for students to gravitate towards student syndicalism, after all, they're students and face genuine hardships. At the same time, there's also a desire to understand and transform the world that animates much student activism, even when focused on more immediate concerns. As Freddy pointed out, it's not that SDS should not fight for accesssible education but how it should - as an end in itself, or as part of a larger political strateygy and vision? If mobilized with a creative and energetic anti-imperialist politics that can address the various injustices and oppressions, student activism can play an important galvanizing role in national politics, and affect the momentum of other movements.

Whenever I hear “ anti imperialist politics” I vomit a little in my mouth. Since well that’s been the excuse the worst political behavior in lefty history. I got some news for ya FRSO dude, students don’t give a shit about imperialism right now. They’re a little more concerned about their lives as educated proles, working as semi indentured labor in a labor market that’s falling apart. Student syndicalism is the only thing that makes SDS relevant these days. The Student left spends so much time disappeared up its own arse worrying about this or that lefty issue that we’ve forgotten that nobody cares. We’re a minority and we will stay a minority at this rate.. If you want to organize students you need to start them with their own problems, and then use that struggle to infuse a more total analysis of how the world works.


To dismiss SDS as irrelevant when they are struggling to develop a broad revoluiontary politics and building the forms to allow it to take expression is just cynical sectarianism. If they are not as far along as they could be, we should try to understand why that is and find ways to help them move forward, not point fingers and write them off. Very few projects start off big, and those few that do are often initiated by those with years of established ties and networks. SDS didn't starting from absolutely nothing, but they didn't have an overflowing Rolodex to rely on either.

*shrugs* It is a bit cynical and sectarian, though I’d characterize it more as skep smart. I helped found one of the more “active” SDS cities. In fact if you are an Sdser you may have been there recently. But even in this den of “activity” there’s really nothing much done. The bases in the universities and most high schools have dried up or turned into punk recruitment. Everything is focused on anti war action, which has some impact, but mostly amounts to spinning our wheels. Oh and most of the active organizers are no longer students and haven’t been for years.

SDS has grown an matured, but not into anything more significant. We’re not seeing the level of coordinated action, Media coverage, or successful campaigns we saw even a year ago. Membership essentially plateaued and SDS has become something of an activist catch all where student lefties chill out for a few months and then move on, leaving a core of super active organizers perpetually spinning their wheels.


As for Maoists' participation, let me make a couple of points. First of all, kasama is not a Maoist organization although it is a key part of our political framework. Many participants are Maoist, but many are not. We are organized around problematics, not settled lines, but we are committed to communism, revolution and internationalism. Secondly, it is wrong to evaluate the potential of an organization or movement based solely on how many of its members adhere to a strict ideology. The few Maoists who joined SDS did so when its politics were largely dominated by anarchism. As for their motivation, they should speak for themselves, but student movements are fluid and experimental, providing ways to challenge previously held orthodoxies while sometimes confirming long-tested insights.

Well SDS is still dominated by anarchism; it’s just changed from anti organizational anarchism to a more organizational approach. The number of Leninists probably doesn’t reach past 50 or so. Anyway, while kasama may not be strictly “maoist” nearly everyone involved is and nearly everyone espouses a maoist “line.” Aside from maybe the FRSO soft folk like Freddy, who are social democrats in maoist clothing.

[Rawthentic]

Joe:

Leftclick has maintained a respectful tone, so I suggest you stop being an asshole, drop your arrogant attitude, and do the same.

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

Joe:

Leftclick has maintained a respectful tone, so I suggest you stop being an asshole, drop your arrogant attitude, and do the same.


Sorry, but I get pissed with SDS stuff becuase it assumes students as some group outside of class politics. Students are either largely proletarian, in which case we need to organize them utilizing student syndicalist methods. Or they're not, at which point we shouldn't talk about student organizing at all. This talk of a revolutionary student movement divorced from the class position and material situation of students is idealistic nonsense that bears all the marks of the guilt ridden, perpetually self flagellating student left. As an active member of the student left, I deal with enough of this shit in real life. I'm not about to tolerate more of it on the net.

[leftclick]

Before I get to my main points I have to ask: you say that SDS is dominated by anarchists AND irrelevant. Cause and effect? Please explain. Okay, now...

You say students don't give a shit about imperialism, so let's get into that a bit.

In my experience, students, workers, people in general, do care about the world situation. Often their ideas are incoherent, undeveloped and take the forms of nationalism, xenophobia and hypocritical moralism such as when people criticize China for human rights abuses while pushing Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo to the backs of their minds. Since most people get their information and framework from bourgeois media sources, to think otherwise is naive. In other cases their ideas take the forms of conspiracy theories. It's not just 9/11truth advocates, it also circulates among African-American communities. In the latter case, it's understandable since there have been, and are, real conspiracies against them, and not all of them secret - racial profiling, hiring practices and residential redlining, being a few. [IIn each case, the guilty party isn't some rogue individual acting alone, but is part of a deliberate effort to discriminate against blacks.] The point is, people do try to make sense of the world but they can only use the tools they have at hand.

One thing that has changed since the war on Iraq began in 2003 is that words like "empire" and "imperialism" have now been re-inserted into manistream discourse. You can now use these words in normal conversation without evincing knee-jerk anti-communism. Of course, it's framed in a very narrow way, to refer only to Bush administration policies but it's out there now. This provides a way to change the terms of discussion, but that won't happen if you already think it can't.

Students are in a unique position because schools, esp. colleges, are places where worldviews are formed, challenged and re-configured constantly. When there is political momentum form this sector with a potential to take on some of the contradictions in society, relating to them with a stance of hostility is wasting an opportunity. To demand that students be "proletarian" before organizing them, and even then on a narrow basis, is not just class reductionsism, it's crass reductionism. Rather than judge the politics by their relation to the social conditions, and potential to transform the context, or create space and boost the momentum of other movements, [including labor], you judge them by class background. When you say that students don't give a shit about imperilalism, it sounds like you're saying they shouldn't give a shit. Now you're argument becomes circular: students don't care about imperialism, some students are trying to get other students to care, they're wasting their time because students don't care...and on and on.

I'm not arguing for a utopian politics and I don't think SDS is either. If you read the interview, it's clear that Freddy is not against fighting for lower school tuition or accessible education. The question is whether it will be done with a broader politics that situates education as key among other struggles, and views it as part of class struggle, or whether it is an end in itself.

"If you want to organize students you need to start them with their own problems, and then use that struggle to infuse a more total analysis of how the world works."

This is a promissory note that will most likely never be redeemed. While it seems to make sense in a schematic way, there are reasons why radical politics almost never arise from bread-and-butter organizing. In the event of a success, it reinforces the notion that collective struggle is for winning concessions and making deals. It produces an incorrect view of capitalism and its possibilities by reducing it to a localized experience, even several ones. Subsequently, a resistance to radical politics is generated and the farthest you can go is left-liberalism. That said, people should fight to improve their conditions wherever they are, but as revolutionaries we also try to change subjectivity, not just conditions. If students don't see the war in Iraq, a revolution in Nepal or even the DNC as "their own problem" we should find ways to change that.

Student syndicalism isn't just an organizing method it's a political standpoint which you've neatly encapsulated. It is premised on the idea that students are just students and that's all they should be concerned about. Ironically, it separates them from real class politics, which demands an understanding of the capitalist-iimperialist system and its various institutions and cultural forms so we can challenge and overthrow them.

It represents a mechanical view of class struggle because it has no sense of ideology and how it works. Even though the working class is the stategic agent of socialist revolution, it does not mean: 1] that they have to move first, or 2] it has to take the form of labor struggle. Class position and material situation tell you nothing but probabilities. If you're working class, how many fellow workers share your anarchist politics? Very few I bet. So what? I'm from the working class and I'm a communist. A few of the working class kids I grew up with are running businesses. Workers want better lives but how do they think that can happen? Many believe in voting or becoming capitalists themselves. Being working class often narrows one's view of political possibility. Why do working class families want accessible education? On one level, so their kids can have more professional opportunities, but on another, so they can have a broader range of experiences and interactions. Sometimes that leads to more radical breaks. What does it mean to be working class then? To focus on the limited view of education and just find ways to enhance that or to use the space to break out of the boundaries of the possible?

Re-read Freddy's interview and you'll see that class, what it means and who it refers to, is one of the key things that is being struggled over. Although you say students don't give a shit, some do, and even that seems like too many in your eyes.

[manic expression]

One thing that has changed since the war on Iraq began in 2003 is that words like "empire" and "imperialism" have now been re-inserted into manistream discourse. You can now use these words in normal conversation without evincing knee-jerk anti-communism. Of course, it's framed in a very narrow way, to refer only to Bush administration policies but it's out there now. This provides a way to change the terms of discussion, but that won't happen if you already think it can't.

That's just the thing. The line (as vague and nebulous as it is, necessarily, which is another problem) that SDS has taken on "imperialism" is, as you said, extremely narrow and basically naive. Why then, when there are other groups which already have a generally correct view of imperialism, should we waste our time in an anarcho-liberal group like SDS? It's like joining the College Democrats because there's a "potential" for developing a revolutionary perspective from within; theoretically, it might sound like a great possibility, but in practice, it's almost nonexistent.

While you have done a good job of expounding on that same theoretical potential for SDS, you haven't dealt with the realities of the issue that both Joe Hill's Ghost and I have encountered. I actually helped organize a chapter, but after the second convention I realized it wasn't worth the time or the effort because of the deep-seated problems and fallacies of the SDS camp. All one has to do is read their statements and listen to their speeches and it becomes apparent that, far from being some sort of potential revolutionary socialist organization, they are fully contented with left-liberal thinking; SDS has proven itself not only suspicious of revolutionary socialism, but hostile to it. To echo Lenin, they say they want a "democratic society", but their conception of this term is impossibly pedantic and mistaken.

Likewise, their specific positions are incredibly delusional. For example, the second convention clearly stated that they rejected "power over" in favor of the "feminist concept of power with". Any self-respecting revolutionary knows this is pure garbage, and yet in the identity politics-obsessed SDS clique, it is accepted as dogma. Again, until you address the very valid and grounded (IMO) objections that Joe Hill's Ghost brought up, your position won't be persuasive.

Lastly, nonsense like 9/11 "Truth" is inexcusable, especially coming from college students who have all the time and resources in the world to research how stupid those conspiracy theories are. This is not an exception for SDS, and in fact it is the rule. That is the problem, and it's not something entryism is going to change.

[leftclick]

What do you think of Freddy's point about the changes between the first and third conventions? It doesn't seem like you stuck around for the third one.

Also, what do you mean by "entryism"? Not coming from a Trotskyist background myself I don't want to misrepresent it.

There is extremely little potential for College Democrats to develop a revolutionary perspective for obvious reasons, not even theoretically. However, many people join the Democrats out of the same motivation that lead some to become radical. They genuinely believe the Democrats can improve people's living conditions. As a whole, they may not be won over, but friendly relations can still be established with some individuals.

Why do socialists do labor organizing? Many workers are even more hostile to socialism than students are. Unless one is involved with immigrant labor [which encompasses not only exploitation but also concentrates issues of race, imperialism and the state], most labor struggle does not have the potential to challenge capitalism. Many labor organizers, especially socialists, take an idealist approach to exploitation as if it was self-enforcing, it just "happens" therefore workplace organizing is seen as the key to revolution. But exploitation requires two things: ideology and coercion. Without an instilled belief in the legitimacy of capital and a state to enforce it's operations, the existence of exploitation wouldn't be so assured. Fighting over better wages, a good health plan, safety enforcement, etc., are all important, but do not make workers more amenable to socialism. Just the opposite, it further entrenches them in capitalist ideology. It's not just "labor aristocracy" either. When radical organizers say we have to organize around immediate needs first, then bring in radical perspectives later , they find that later is later and later because they reinforce a pragmatic ideology that makes socialism seem unrealistic and undesirable. Students, especially radical students, are in a position to crack that hegemony. There are some complexities that I'm not able to get now, time mainly, but their transitional social status does afford them the relative advantage of being able re-think ideologies and take necessary risks. This can sometimes be reckless, but that's necessary too. Sometimes you don't know how far a situation can expand if you don't push a little. The trick is to do a realistic evaluation afterwards, and not degenerate into perpetual adventurism.

Anti-communism notwithstanding, socialists stay in labor because of what they perceive as its strategic location in the means of production. Obviously you don't believe student struggle has strategic value, and perhaps you don't perceive it as class struggle. I'm still trying to formulate it myself, but unless we begin to understand class struggle as something broader than workplace struggle we're going to keep going in circles.

To clarify, I was not equating college students with 9/11 truth politics, though there are quite a few involved. But this only proves my point that students, even when they fall into dead-end politics, do see themselves as part of the larger world, and are objectively immersed in class politics. Are we going to bring our politics into the mix, or let other politics dominate the discourse?

From what I observe, SDS, as a free association group, has political variations that takes on different forms and emphases depending on geographic location and the local political histories. As such, many chapters may be more anarchist, others may even be more social democrat, or even mainstream Democrat, but all are motivated by a desire for social transformation. Contented with left-liberal thinking? That might be less settled than you think, or want to think.


That's just the thing. The line (as vague and nebulous as it is, necessarily, which is another problem) that SDS has taken on "imperialism" is, as you said, extremely narrow and basically naive. Why then, when there are other groups which already have a generally correct view of imperialism, should we waste our time in an anarcho-liberal group like SDS? It's like joining the College Democrats because there's a "potential" for developing a revolutionary perspective from within; theoretically, it might sound like a great possibility, but in practice, it's almost nonexistent.

While you have done a good job of expounding on that same theoretical potential for SDS, you haven't dealt with the realities of the issue that both Joe Hill's Ghost and I have encountered. I actually helped organize a chapter, but after the second convention I realized it wasn't worth the time or the effort because of the deep-seated problems and fallacies of the SDS camp. All one has to do is read their statements and listen to their speeches and it becomes apparent that, far from being some sort of potential revolutionary socialist organization, they are fully contented with left-liberal thinking; SDS has proven itself not only suspicious of revolutionary socialism, but hostile to it. To echo Lenin, they say they want a "democratic society", but their conception of this term is impossibly pedantic and mistaken.

Likewise, their specific positions are incredibly delusional. For example, the second convention clearly stated that they rejected "power over" in favor of the "feminist concept of power with". Any self-respecting revolutionary knows this is pure garbage, and yet in the identity politics-obsessed SDS clique, it is accepted as dogma. Again, until you address the very valid and grounded (IMO) objections that Joe Hill's Ghost brought up, your position won't be persuasive.

Lastly, nonsense like 9/11 "Truth" is inexcusable, especially coming from college students who have all the time and resources in the world to research how stupid those conspiracy theories are. This is not an exception for SDS, and in fact it is the rule. That is the problem, and it's not something entryism is going to change.

[manic expression]

What do you think of Freddy's point about the changes between the first and third conventions? It doesn't seem like you stuck around for the third one.

Also, what do you mean by "entryism"? Not coming from a Trotskyist background myself I don't want to misrepresent it.

I've been keeping tabs on SDS, actually, hoping to see a revolutionary consciousness develop, but it hasn't. I reviewed the decisions of the third convention, I watched SDS' panel on Left Forum this year (I kept their rhetoric in my mind as I wrote that last post) and I'm still on the NE listserv, so I am very well aware of the present shape of SDS. What do I think about the changes? I think they're marginal and ultimately insignificant.

I mean entryism in that you can't make a communist organization just by inserting communists into it, my use of the term was more convenience but you get the point. SDS has not been receptive of revolutionary perspectives, and that is not something to dismiss, it is a rooted political problem SDS embraces.


There is extremely little potential for College Democrats to develop a revolutionary perspective for obvious reasons, not even theoretically. However, many people join the Democrats out of the same motivation that lead some to become radical. They genuinely believe the Democrats can improve people's living conditions. As a whole, they may not be won over, but friendly relations can still be established with some individuals.

I see about as much potential a chapter of the College Democrats to become radical as SDS has of becoming revolutionary with a coherent program. SDS has engaged in anarcho-liberalism since its inception in 2006, and that hasn't changed from anything I've seen. As Joe Hill's Ghost pointed out, SDS HAS developed, it just developed into something that's irrelevant and not worth any revolutionary's time. Their identity politics (which usually descends into self-flagellating guilt-trips), their hostility towards "authority", their vapid statements and goals, their lack of unity and coherence and more are all results of what SDS has developed into, not what it is developing into. You're putting false hope into a group that will disappoint you.


Why do socialists do labor organizing? Many workers are even more hostile to socialism than students are. Unless one is involved with immigrant labor [which encompasses not only exploitation but also concentrates issues of race, imperialism and the state], most labor struggle does not have the potential to challenge capitalism.

This is missing the point. Socialists engage in labor organizing because the workers are the only revolutionary class, and because revolution is in their interests (among other reasons). SDS has embraced an ideology, however vague, that is in direct contradiction to working class revolution. While you may compare this to anti-communist workers, I think the comparison is fundamentally flawed because SDS constitutes an organization, not an entire class of which there are anti-communist members. That's like trying to compare reactionary trade unions with the NEFAC.


Many labor organizers, especially socialists, take an idealist approach to exploitation as if it was self-enforcing, it just "happens" therefore workplace organizing is seen as the key to revolution. But exploitation requires two things: ideology and coercion. Without an instilled belief in the legitimacy of capital and a state to enforce it's operations, the existence of exploitation wouldn't be so assured. Fighting over better wages, a good health plan, safety enforcement, etc., are all important, but do not make workers more amenable to socialism. Just the opposite, it further entrenches them in capitalist ideology. It's not just "labor aristocracy" either. When radical organizers say we have to organize around immediate needs first, then bring in radical perspectives later , they find that later is later and later because they reinforce a pragmatic ideology that makes socialism seem unrealistic and undesirable.

I disagree, fighting for small gains allows workers to develop class consciousness and see that the capitalists will never do anything to help them if it isn't taken.


Students, especially radical students, are in a position to crack that hegemony. There are some complexities that I'm not able to get now, time mainly, but their transitional social status does afford them the relative advantage of being able re-think ideologies and take necessary risks. This can sometimes be reckless, but that's necessary too. Sometimes you don't know how far a situation can expand if you don't push a little. The trick is to do a realistic evaluation afterwards, and not degenerate into perpetual adventurism.

You call them "radical students", but by doing so you sweep their so-called "radicalism" under the rug. SDS' radicalism is radical on the liberal scale; it was in 2006 and it was now. Outside of the small number of communists trying to change SDS by some sort of mass conversion, there is no real interest in revolutionary ideas, only thoughtless talk of a misty "democratic society". Further, Joe Hill's Ghost talked about their functional problems that you haven't even tried to address. The claim that SDS is "spinning their wheels" is not unfounded, and I took away the same perception myself. I don't think it's wise to pretend that SDS has some inner communist waiting to come out, it's found its ideology, which is a carbon copy of a Sociology 110 course.


Anti-communism notwithstanding, socialists stay in labor because of what they perceive as its strategic location in the means of production. Obviously you don't believe student struggle has strategic value, and perhaps you don't perceive it as class struggle. I'm still trying to formulate it myself, but unless we begin to understand class struggle as something broader than workplace struggle we're going to keep going in circles.

I think students are extremely important. Don't think I have abandoned organization within colleges and universities, because I'm engaged in it right now, just not with SDS.


To clarify, I was not equating college students with 9/11 truth politics, though there are quite a few involved. But this only proves my point that students, even when they fall into dead-end politics, do see themselves as part of the larger world, and are objectively immersed in class politics. Are we going to bring our politics into the mix, or let other politics dominate the discourse?

I understand on the 9/11 truthers. However, my point still stands: students who are involved in dead-end politics, or rather a dead-end organization, may see themselves as part of a larger world, but it doesn't make them revolutionary at all. Everyone is immersed in class politics, even confused liberals, and that is the position that SDS has proudly taken over the past few years.

I think Marxists and revolutionaries have thrown their politics into the mix, and admirably so, but unsuccessfully so. SDS is not the discourse, it's A discourse; more precisely, it's a discourse of half-baked anarcho-liberalism. That is not worth our time or effort, no more than "the discourse" of the College Democrats is.


From what I observe, SDS, as a free association group, has political variations that takes on different forms and emphases depending on geographic location and the local political histories. As such, many chapters may be more anarchist, others may even be more social democrat, or even mainstream Democrat, but all are motivated by a desire for social transformation. Contented with left-liberal thinking? That might be less settled than you think, or want to think.

I think that its status as a so-called "free association group" is a problem in and of itself. So long as it clings to this identity (and it has), it will not adopt effective organizational structures, it will not take a revolutionary mindset.

Also, you basically said what I was trying to: "many chapters are anarchist, others may even be more social democrat, or even mainstream Democrat, but all are motivated by a desire for social transformation." Are ANY of those groups worth our time? Are ANY of those tendencies open to revolutionary socialism? No and no. They may be motivated by a desire for social transformation, but the College Democrats are, too. By no small coincidence, their potential for revolutionary politics is roughly the same.

[Rawthentic]

Other posts from Kasama on the SDS are here:

SDS Discussions On Kasama (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/sds-discussions-on-kasama/)

[ShineThePath]

To be brief.

I want to deal with a few matters that Ghost of Joe Hill brought up, and ultimately my method in relation to his are completely different. He essentially drops back on to Economism and Workersim in an utterly simple fashion. While I don't think revolutionary students can ignore the issues facing students, stopping there and acting as if we're organizing "future workers" is foolish and wrong, it simply won't build revolutionary consciousness. Students are in the unique position of being radicalized and coming to consciousness independent of any political force when they're in college. They become organic intellectuals, and especially in universities like CUNY, we should be making an attempt bring forward the revolutionary elements and winning over a broader part through our work.

Work on the bread and butter has in the experience of not only myself, but a whole host of previous student activists have not built nothing. After serious discussion of this issue in my SDS chapter, a comrade of mine expressed it quite simply that "fixing our escalators is not going to get people rev'd."

Students ARE actually moved by the issues of anti-imperialism, especially students who are people of color, the global south in their millions rising up and fighting US Imperialism has been the spark for most young revolutionaries becoming revolutionaries, I know of little to any time when a student becomes revolutionary through alone fighting tuition hikes.

It also must be said, in a historical materialist way, this idea of Students as "future workers" is not correct. Students have no class category, quite literally, and are only bound to it through family background. Students occupy a transitional stage of life where they can become 'future' workers or they may go into other class stratas. But Students, are a social strata amongst themselves, despite how temporal it may be. Treating student organizing as union organizing is ultimately not understanding this reality.

Further, what does this line mean in objective concrete play. Here we must think that students have more relations to their community and a duty to it than have 'interests.' The latter is a call to self-interest and the first call is to political-ethical thinking and action. Self-interest produces nothing in student organizing, has meant historically nothing, whereas political and ethical consciousness has given rise and play in part to world movements across the world.

[manic expression]

I want to deal with a few matters that Ghost of Joe Hill brought up, and ultimately my method in relation to his are completely different. He essentially drops back on to Economism and Workersim in an utterly simple fashion.

Really quickly, I think the most persuasive portion of his argument came when he talked about what SDS actually is in practice, what is has developed into. This is something that neither you nor leftclick have engaged, and I suspect it's because what SDS is has nothing to do with the distant theoretical vision the pro-SDSers are pushing. As I said in my previous post, expounding on the potential of SDS might be interesting, but it's quite useless in that it's farfetched and idealistic.

SDS is not (not) the Alpha and Omega of student organizing, they just have a lot of nominal members (most of whom aren't very active) and got some attention in a few liberal magazines. SDS is a loose organization based on a confused anarchist and liberal ideology. How you can call them worthwhile for communists because of the global south is just beyond me, for it makes no sense.

Really, the pro-SDS argument here boils down to trying to wish a non-revolutionary organization revolutionary; it is far more constructive to promote revolutionary socialist groups and ideas themselves.

[ShineThePath]

Patience Manic, I was gonna come to address your concerns.

First let me say that your concerns and thoughts are different Joe Hill's. He is essentially wanting to see the sights lowered for SDS than what it currently has for itself.

But to get into things more, I think you shouldn't assume why I am pitching SDS or why I think SDS is important. I am quite aware there many anarchists in SDS, and I am even more aware that is has not a coherent ideology, a part from this a lot of what you said is either wrong or just outdated impressions of SDS altogether. Red baiting in SDS is no longer, for the most part, tolerated and who has become on the outs is infantile and immature anarchists.

How else would I have been able to put forward the National Structure of SDS and ultimately have it pass for a 90-20 vote at this convention if I were seen as Red infilitration. This might have been true a year ago, but it is not true today, there has been a significant leap in consciousness.

Third, the idea that SDS is an Anarchist-Liberal organization is false. There are many trends within SDS and there are certain places those trends have more influence than others...in Chicago, you have the Platypus Collective playing a big role in SDS..in NYC, there is a great diversity, but people are influenced as far from Mao to Mike Albert (sometimes both!), in DC there is a true a vibrant Anarchist movement, in the South you have some FRSO Fight Back! and Solidarity leading chapters. In California, altogether, there are emerging SDS chapters based close to Marxist lines.

So this idea of Anarchist dominated SDS is no longer true. Not to say Anarchists don't play a big part, but you're really over hyping them. In fact, if anything SDS is developing a real mass character.

Of course, what I think hear is important about SDS, is here we have a mass student organization that emerged and freely associated with each other based on a call of High School students some years back. There is an importance here to join into organizations in which the masses are highly mobile and are active and fight for a better political line. No one is a Tabla Rasa, this requires political struggle and the willingness to work with others who may not share your exact political framework. This is fine with me! We have a mass organization that is radical! That members are talking about getting rid of the 4 Alls that Marx spoke about! And who are you honestly to say this is 'liberalism?' This is singly the most important development in the student movement since Progressive Student Network...probably more so.

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

Before I get to my main points I have to ask: you say that SDS is dominated by anarchists AND irrelevant. Cause and effect? Please explain. Okay, now...

It’s dominated by anarchists, though its irrelevance has something more to do with the inability of all the different groups. Synthesis federations just don’t work. Most of the anarchists I know in sds are doing decent work, though there’s a whole lot of crusty dumb shits.

You say students don't give a shit about imperialism, so let's get into that a bit.

In my experience, students, workers, people in general, do care about the world situation. Often their ideas are incoherent, undeveloped and take the forms of nationalism, xenophobia and hypocritical moralism such as when people criticize China for human rights abuses while pushing Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo to the backs of their minds. Since most people get their information and framework from bourgeois media sources, to think otherwise is naive. In other cases their ideas take the forms of conspiracy theories. It's not just 9/11truth advocates, it also circulates among African-American communities. In the latter case, it's understandable since there have been, and are, real conspiracies against them, and not all of them secret - racial profiling, hiring practices and residential redlining, being a few. [IIn each case, the guilty party isn't some rogue individual acting alone, but is part of a deliberate effort to discriminate against blacks.] The point is, people do try to make sense of the world but they can only use the tools they have at hand.

One thing that has changed since the war on Iraq began in 2003 is that words like "empire" and "imperialism" have now been re-inserted into manistream discourse. You can now use these words in normal conversation without evincing knee-jerk anti-communism. Of course, it's framed in a very narrow way, to refer only to Bush administration policies but it's out there now. This provides a way to change the terms of discussion, but that won't happen if you already think it can't.

I haven’t seen anything

Students are in a unique position because schools, esp. colleges, are places where worldviews are formed, challenged and re-configured constantly. When there is political momentum form this sector with a potential to take on some of the contradictions in society, relating to them with a stance of hostility is wasting an opportunity. To demand that students be "proletarian" before organizing them, and even then on a narrow basis, is not just class reductionsism, it's crass reductionism. Rather than judge the politics by their relation to the social conditions, and potential to transform the context, or create space and boost the momentum of other movements, [including labor], you judge them by class background. When you say that students don't give a shit about imperilalism, it sounds like you're saying they shouldn't give a shit. Now you're argument becomes circular: students don't care about imperialism, some students are trying to get other students to care, they're wasting their time because students don't care...and on and on.

Class reductionism? Are we or are we not

I'm not arguing for a utopian politics and I don't think SDS is either. If you read the interview, it's clear that Freddy is not against fighting for lower school tuition or accessible education. The question is whether it will be done with a broader politics that situates education as key among other struggles, and views it as part of class struggle, or whether it is an end in itself.

"If you want to organize students you need to start them with their own problems, and then use that struggle to infuse a more total analysis of how the world works."

This is a promissory note that will most likely never be redeemed. While it seems to make sense in a schematic way, there are reasons why radical politics almost never arise from bread-and-butter organizing. In the event of a success, it reinforces the notion that collective struggle is for winning concessions and making deals. It produces an incorrect view of capitalism and its possibilities by reducing it to a localized experience, even several ones. Subsequently, a resistance to radical politics is generated and the farthest you can go is left-liberalism. That said, people should fight to improve their conditions wherever they are, but as revolutionaries we also try to change subjectivity, not just conditions. If students don't see the war in Iraq, a revolution in Nepal or even the DNC as "their own problem" we should find ways to change that.

Student syndicalism isn't just an organizing method it's a political standpoint which you've neatly encapsulated. It is premised on the idea that students are just students and that's all they should be concerned about. Ironically, it separates them from real class politics, which demands an understanding of the capitalist-iimperialist system and its various institutions and cultural forms so we can challenge and overthrow them.

It represents a mechanical view of class struggle because it has no sense of ideology and how it works. Even though the working class is the stategic agent of socialist revolution, it does not mean: 1] that they have to move first, or 2] it has to take the form of labor struggle. Class position and material situation tell you nothing but probabilities. If you're working class, how many fellow workers share your anarchist politics? Very few I bet. So what? I'm from the working class and I'm a communist. A few of the working class kids I grew up with are running businesses. Workers want better lives but how do they think that can happen? Many believe in voting or becoming capitalists themselves. Being working class often narrows one's view of political possibility. Why do working class families want accessible education? On one level, so their kids can have more professional opportunities, but on another, so they can have a broader range of experiences and interactions. Sometimes that leads to more radical breaks. What does it mean to be working class then? To focus on the limited view of education and just find ways to enhance that or to use the space to break out of the boundaries of the possible?

Re-read Freddy's interview and you'll see that class, what it means and who it refers to, is one of the key things that is being struggled over. Although you say students don't give a shit, some do, and even that seems like too many in your eyes.


I think the main issue of SDS’s irrelevance has nothing to do with anarchism, or Maoism. It has to do with the synthesis nature of the organization. There is little unity around tactics, strategy or analysis. As a result, SDS doesn’t really understand the constituency it’s trying to organize. It looks at students and youth as some sort of ahistorical category of the population. Some sort of magical grouping that doesn’t have defining class characteristics, something that’s amorphous and easy to mold. That’s why you state that students are “forming worldviews” and why its important to get them at that point. Sorry, but this doesn’t pace with reality.

What is a revolutionary student movement? I don’t think anyone really knows for sure. Students are not a unified group. You can crow “class reductionism” all you wish (which is hilarious coming from a Marxist) but we shant forget that consciousness and actions arise primarily out of one’s direct material environment. If you are a bourgeois student then you will have a bourgeois consciousness. You can go on a revolutionary joyride for a few years or a few months, but reality hits hard and that reality engenders a capitalist view point. There are a few exceptions, but they prove the general rule. That’s why the “New Left” got recuperated so effectively, because a lot of those students were bourgeois kids. SDS ignores this. They don’t see class as the central aspect of revolutionary movement. As an sdser once said to me “That focus on class is tantamount to racism and sexism.” And this is the problem. With the focus on the ahistorical “student” SDS throws class in as just another aspect of an identity politic of oppression. “I’m a black, lesbian, working class woman. I’m a white heterosexual working class male, I’m a white class privileged heterosexual woman” and so on and so forth. That’s why SDS has a “working class” caucus along with its myriad of other caucus groups. They think class functions just as race.

This is wrong. In order to building a revolutionary movement we need to build a movement that understands the difference between social oppression and class exploitation. Social oppression is something that can be corrected in less than revolutionary ways. Theoretically we could have a free market utopia where homophobia, racism and sexism don’t exist. While social oppression often assists the ruling class, it is not the defining division of our society. Social relations could adapt, but society as we know it would collapse if we made a true break with capitalism. If we are to build a revolutionary student movement we have to ask whether students are working class. Anti oppression work is of the foremost importance, as it is just as odious and is deeply tied together with class oppression. A true workers revolution must be for the liberation of oppressed groups as well. BUT, we can’t organize a revolutionary student movement without a focus on organizing working class students and fighting for working class concerns. Class is what ties us all together, and class can bring down the system. Race or sex or sexual orientation cannot.

Now I sincerely believe that the majority of students are working class. Indeed that majority is growing larger and larger with every year. Capital is demanding an ever greater level of qualification in order to enter the workforce. A high school diploma used to garner what a Bachelors fetches today. So then what are we to do? We should organize students much like we would organize workers. Most of them do work part time anyway, and the others will be entering the workforce soon enough. So then our goals should be not to organize these students as students, but as a specialized section of the working class. Just like organizing the unemployed, or organizing workers of color, students are subject to specific and unique material situations. For example, as the demand for education has increased, so has the amount of debt that the average student carries. Why is this so? Well it’s a great way to discipline young workers who normally wouldn’t have much to lose and would make great militants. So then organizing around debt is not some “economistic” narrow demand, but actually part of the larger revolutionary worker’s movement.

Student organizing should be about teaching people who have never engaged in collective action, how to engage in collective action. It is just like any other kind of organizing really. You talk to students and agitate around improvements in their daily lives. Through that self organized resistance, students undergo significant consciousness raising. They see that collective action gets the goods, and they learn to trust on their fellow workers rather than some random authority figure.

This is where your analysis fails. You think that collective organizing is not sufficient for building a revolutionary consciousness. You seem to think that people become communists by reading the right books and learning about “imperialism.” Sorry but you’re wrong, people become revolutionary through struggle. And struggle starts with your material situation.

But SDS doesn’t do this. They don’t understand that action often runs ahead of consciousness. They have it ass backwards. They focus on ideological recruitment over struggle recruitment. And what happens? They degenerate into a weak willed identity politic and then to make matters even worse, they engage in campaigns that require a mass to be effective, a mass they don’t have. Just like the Student left has done FOR DECADES, SDS has taken to spectacular actions and stunts as a way to build numbers. They’ve focused on telling people about the big issues without building the proper groundwork.

Students may agree or disagree that imperialism is a problem. But they either don’t care or don’t see how they can do anything about it. They have real lives, and real problems, and those seem a lot more important to them. And why shouldn’t they? The left whines on and on about the world’s problems, but it seems to offer no solutions, certainly none that seem reasonable. Collective struggle changes all that. When they come into conflict with their bosses, their administrators, and their debt collectors, struggle unmasks how systems of coercive force oppress and exploit them. They understand class analysis, and see the impetus for opposing wars not from some liberal silliness, but because imperialism is a war on working people of all stripes. They won’t get this without struggle. You can’t tell them to “fight imperialism” straight up. That’s what the student left has been doing, and all it does is corral us into a perpetual minority role. Only a certain percentage of the population is susceptible to ideological conversion, struggle is necessary for the rest.

And that my friends, is why SDS remains irrelevant. Just like the student left as a whole, it is structurally limited to the amount of people it can recruit and the amount of effect it can have. SDS has matured organizationally in order to optimize this limit. But the limit remains, and will always remain.

[manic expression]

OK, I wasn't sure if that was a reply to both of us or not. First off, I do strongly agree with a lot of Joe Hill's Ghost's objections to SDS, probably because we've experienced similar problems during our involvement with them.

While out-and-out red baiting may be gone, I think you're painting quite the rosy picture of SDS. As I've said, I've been keeping up on SDS after I dropped my involvement with them, and I haven't seen any real change in rhetoric or vision or anything of the sort. Identity politics still reign supreme, not to mention petty liberalism masquerading as "anti-authoritarianism" or "anti-oppression" or what have you. That has not changed, and so SDS' ideological mess remains.

As it so happens, I remember having this exact same discussion with you, probably last year, and you were telling me the exact same things then (on how the consciousness was developing, etc.). I find it hard to believe that your optimism is matched by the real-life SDS if you have the same things to tell me.

Yes, I saw the National Structure decision, but that has nothing to do with SDS' consciousness. You talk of consciousness in an almost roundabout way, when in reality SDSers just realized that their "anti-hierarchy" models simply didn't work. That, really, is all SDS accomplished, and it was out of necessity and not out of a development of revolutionary consciousness. Did they change or alter the many asinine statements that were adopted at the second convention? No. I have tried very hard to share your optimism, but the evidence tells me otherwise.

True, SDS isn't even an anarcho-liberal organization, because it's set up with pretensions to inclusiveness and other such high-sounding morals. At any rate, it is certainly dominated by anarchists, as leftclick conceded, and the discourse is certainly dominated by liberalist naivete. Did you see the youtube video of the SDS panel at Left Forum (which was earlier this year)? Nothing but vague talk of a "democratic society" and an end to "hierarchy", something I can find at a Green Party meeting (and this is from this year!). To suggest that Marxism could somehow inject itself into this environment is farfetched to say the least.

Also, while some may fashion themselves as influenced by Marxism, that is a very different thing than being part of a disciplined and organized Marxist-Leninist party. Why not campaign for that instead of spending time trying to convince SDSers to not be what they are? I think both you and leftclick have unintentionally seen my position as just anti-campus organizing (which, admittedly, might be somewhat understandable as I haven't been pro-anything so far). That's not the case: I am asking Marxists and revolutionary socialists to promote their own programs on campuses around the country. It's what I do, and I do it because pushing forth a revolutionary platform is far better and more constructive than getting weighed down by SDS and all its problems.

Now, on your last paragraph, I do think you bring up some valid points, but once again I do not see that matched by what SDS has developed into. Yes, its founding and spread was quite sporadic and initially impressive. However, if you go past the website stats, you'll see that the number of active and committed members is far fewer than the would-be impressive claims made by SDS. It took them almost a year to take down my school's chapter after it disbanded, so let's not let our eyes glaze over just yet.

Yes, there are no tabla rasas, but there are more worthwhile efforts than others. When SDS identifies with non-revolutionary politics, why should we try to change a non-revolutionary group? I don't see any communists trying to change the SPUSA or PDA from the inside, and it would be foolish, so why should they do the same with SDS?

A worthwhile effort is engaging students with Marxism-Leninism, not struggling to change SDS into something it most clearly is not. At a certain point, you have to accept that some groups won't be revolutionary. If we don't try to join the College Democrats just because they talk of the ills of imperialism, why is SDS any different? In the end, it isn't.


Patience Manic, I was gonna come to address your concerns.

First let me say that your concerns and thoughts are different Joe Hill's. He is essentially wanting to see the sights lowered for SDS than what it currently has for itself.

But to get into things more, I think you shouldn't assume why I am pitching SDS or why I think SDS is important. I am quite aware there many anarchists in SDS, and I am even more aware that is has not a coherent ideology, a part from this a lot of what you said is either wrong or just outdated impressions of SDS altogether. Red baiting in SDS is no longer, for the most part, tolerated and who has become on the outs is infantile and immature anarchists.

How else would I have been able to put forward the National Structure of SDS and ultimately have it pass for a 90-20 vote at this convention if I were seen as Red infilitration. This might have been true a year ago, but it is not true today, there has been a significant leap in consciousness.

Third, the idea that SDS is an Anarchist-Liberal organization is false. There are many trends within SDS and there are certain places those trends have more influence than others...in Chicago, you have the Platypus Collective playing a big role in SDS..in NYC, there is a great diversity, but people are influenced as far from Mao to Mike Albert (sometimes both!), in DC there is a true a vibrant Anarchist movement, in the South you have some FRSO Fight Back! and Solidarity leading chapters. In California, altogether, there are emerging SDS chapters based close to Marxist lines.

So this idea of Anarchist dominated SDS is no longer true. Not to say Anarchists don't play a big part, but you're really over hyping them. In fact, if anything SDS is developing a real mass character.

Of course, what I think hear is important about SDS, is here we have a mass student organization that emerged and freely associated with each other based on a call of High School students some years back. There is an importance here to join into organizations in which the masses are highly mobile and are active and fight for a better political line. No one is a Tabla Rasa, this requires political struggle and the willingness to work with others who may not share your exact political framework. This is fine with me! We have a mass organization that is radical! That members are talking about getting rid of the 4 Alls that Marx spoke about! And who are you honestly to say this is 'liberalism?' This is singly the most important development in the student movement since Progressive Student Network...probably more so.

[Asoka89]

Not all times are suited for revolutionary organizations. SDS in the early 60s was very liberal and reformist, by the end of the 60s they were relatively revolutionary, or at least very militant and very radical.

Personally I did a little work with the DC SDS, and im considering joining them in the Fall in addition to the other socialist group im a leader of at my campus.

[ShineThePath]

For a quick reply Manic, why I am saying something I've said 1 year ago because its happening processually. Did you expect a SDS-ML after one year? In fact, I think you should never expect that; however lets be real about the question here. SDS is a radical student organization, there are plenty of revolutionaries within it and they are the most relevant student organization around.

Your experience reading listserves is just textual readings of a handful of SDS members, it says nothing about its mass character or where its at.

And I'd like to second what Asoka has said. The original SDS was quite liberal too, I mean it had Todd Gitlin as president! The emergence of the PLP and the National Liberation Front of Vietnam's fight changed the whole character of SDS in a relative short frame of time. This has been true of many other students orgs too.

Now you can come at it from the standpoint of developing a new ML youth group, I have no problem with that, but to have no relation to this blossoming mass organization is just downright not intelligble for me. There plenty of communist youth groups, none have a national or mass character.

Just to repeat a little Neruda "Only with a burning patience can we conquer the city."

I hope Maniac you readventure into SDS.:)

[Saorsa]

Whenever I hear “ anti imperialist politics” I vomit a little in my mouth. Since well that’s been the excuse the worst political behavior in lefty history. I got some news for ya FRSO dude, students don’t give a shit about imperialism right now. They’re a little more concerned about their lives as educated proles, working as semi indentured labor in a labor market that’s falling apart. Student syndicalism is the only thing that makes SDS relevant these days. The Student left spends so much time disappeared up its own arse worrying about this or that lefty issue that we’ve forgotten that nobody cares. We’re a minority and we will stay a minority at this rate.. If you want to organize students you need to start them with their own problems, and then use that struggle to infuse a more total analysis of how the world works.

That could be used as a dictionary definition of economism. Of course you have to get involved in bread and butter struggles and try to infuse these struggles with a wider, anti-capitalist vision, but to put forward the line that we shouldn't promote anti-imperiaalism on campus because there's currently a protracted downturn in struggle is just daft. We should always try to do both, to struggle on both every day issues and wider world issues - to neglect one is to neglect the other.

[ShineThePath]

Not only would I say this economism, its reactionary.

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

That could be used as a dictionary definition of economism. Of course you have to get involved in bread and butter struggles and try to infuse these struggles with a wider, anti-capitalist vision, but to put forward the line that we shouldn't promote anti-imperiaalism on campus because there's currently a protracted downturn in struggle is just daft. We should always try to do both, to struggle on both every day issues and wider world issues - to neglect one is to neglect the other.

I never said that. I said that most students don't give a shit about imperialism, but a good minority (the student left) do without any prodding. However, we need to situate anti imperialist work within the context of mass organization. I guess its a little known secret to yall Maoists, but in order to fight against a war you need numbers and those numbers aren't materializing. You've put the cart before the horse by slotting anti imperialism and abstract issue politics in front of basic organizing. If you want numbers behind anti-imperialism then you need to show people a movement that's vibrant and relevant to them. Anti-imperialism makes the most sense when people already have basic class consciousness and basic struggle experience.

Most people look around at all the protests against the war and think its stupid. And why shouldn't they? The student left has behaved in the same sanctimonious "We don't give a shit about your day to day problems" way for so long that most kids don't care. Our movement has lost its relevance to everyday people. And until our movement seems relevant, they will contiue to ignore us.

BTW drop this "economism" nonsense. I refrain from using anarchist jargon, you should stop the Maoist jargon too.

Freddy- Don't ever call me reactionary again. Either critique my argument or don't say anything at all.

[ShineThePath]

Actually plenty of students DO care about Imperialism, and it is why its singlely the most important issue that has drove student movements. Your assumption that students don't care about Imperialism is just simply incorrect, and one sided. Do Africana Studies majors care about Imperialism? What about Asian-American or Puerto Rican studies?

Students actually don't care as much as you think about their pellet grants and see this as just a simple hardship. There is no politics involved in it at all and alone is a failed strategy in building revolutionary consciousness amongst students, amongst what Gramsci would call "organic intellectuals."

[Asoka89]

Or you can do both. Connect the struggles of student debt with the wider system of capitalist exploitation and banker control, connect the cost of education with the exclusion of underprivileged minorities and connect that to oppression inherent in the capitalist power structures. While at the same time campaigning against war and imperialism and having solidarity with anti-imperialist movements internationally.

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

Or you can do both. Connect the struggles of student debt with the wider system of capitalist exploitation and banker control, connect the cost of education with the exclusion of underprivileged minorities and connect that to oppression inherent in the capitalist power structures. While at the same time campaigning against war and imperialism and having solidarity with anti-imperialist movements internationally.

Yup, but emphasis needs to be on the more pedestrian student stuff. It's less fun and glamorous, so it often gets left behind. Yet that is what actually builds the movement. Otherwise its just a bunch of radicals talking to each other in an echo chamber, or a bunch of punk kids running around downtown while everyone is at work.

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

Actually plenty of students DO care about Imperialism, and it is why its singlely the most important issue that has drove student movements. Your assumption that students don't care about Imperialism is just simply incorrect, and one sided. Do Africana Studies majors care about Imperialism? What about Asian-American or Puerto Rican studies?

Students actually don't care as much as you think about their pellet grants and see this as just a simple hardship. There is no politics involved in it at all and alone is a failed strategy in building revolutionary consciousness amongst students, amongst what Gramsci would call "organic intellectuals."

Yeah it drove a student movement that came about during an era of third world national liberation struggles. You'll also notice that the same student movement took militant anti imperialism to such extents that it crucified itself.

If you haven't realized, most students are not ethnic studies majors, in fact probably 90 percent of em aren't. Like I said before, theres always a section of the student body that flocks to anti imperialism. they also tend to flcok to all the other student left causes. However, that section is a perpetual minority. Student's aren't some non classed transitionary group. They are colored by thier class values. And like most workers, students don't really care because they either 1. have never been confronted with these ideas much due to the left's incompetence or 2. have been confronted with the left's incompetance and concluded that its a pointless game. As is the case always, most revolutionary mass movements gain most of their revolutionaries from basic struggle. Under capitalism there's only so many people you can reach with ideas, most people need changes in their material existence to buy into our cause.

Students care about their daily lives. That includes high tuition, arbitrary disciplinary procedures, shitty part time work, and their enormous debt. When I walk around campus most people are receptive to the fact that world is fucked. But the overwhelming opinion is that we can't do anything about it. Even amongst those against things like imperialism, they don't really see how the self marginalizing, and often moronic, student left can provide an avenue for change. We have to start by showing people that collective change is possible, and that our movement is a rational, responsible, goal based movement that works toward tangible victories and utopian visions. In order to do that, we need people and victories, things that ideological recruitment can't give us enough of.

[Winter]

I think the main point here is that Kasama is actively engaging with other groups, regardless of what ideologies the individual members follow. We all share common concerns, and it is under these common concerns we should unite.

[ShineThePath]

Or you can do both. Connect the struggles of student debt with the wider system of capitalist exploitation and banker control, connect the cost of education with the exclusion of underprivileged minorities and connect that to oppression inherent in the capitalist power structures. While at the same time campaigning against war and imperialism and having solidarity with anti-imperialist movements internationally.

I don't disagree with this at all, and in fact arguing for it. However Joe Hill's understanding of Student movements is simply an extension of Trade Unionism and economism into Student struggle. This is just, sorry to put it harshly, stupid.

Joe is right that not many students are in ethnic studies programs, and many are white and have an accessibility to be in college altogether. But honestly, who cares? Are we really working here to stop debt for people possibility getting their MA in Business.

There is no politics here in this question of student debt, it is purely acting on the maxim of self-interest. This is a whole-sale part of Joe Hill's entire method, appeal to people's basic economic interest and you'll win their hearts. This is a 'common sense' pragmatic analysis, but ummm..No. Fighting for better facilities in your dorm and more access to computer labs doesn't actually build movements.

Further, there is a question here of doing concrete analysis. I go to the City University of New York, where the struggles against tuition and Open Admissions was a struggle against white supremacy overall (CUNY did serve working people throughout its history, unfortunately they were white workers). But those struggles came in part and under leadership of the struggles for ethnic studies, which are linked to a developed understanding of People of Color's history as oppressed people across the world, the product of Imperialism extending its hand and creating diasporic communities.

What student movements need to aim to do is create organic intellectuals and leaders, this means putting the politics in command, and seeking out and developing revolutionary consciousness on the basis of a political-ethical call. That is primary, the 'pedistrian' is not.

[manic expression]

For a quick reply Manic, why I am saying something I've said 1 year ago because its happening processually. Did you expect a SDS-ML after one year? In fact, I think you should never expect that; however lets be real about the question here. SDS is a radical student organization, there are plenty of revolutionaries within it and they are the most relevant student organization around.

I didn't expect a Marxist-Leninist SDS, and I don't expect one now. Those were never my objections, and the fact that I'm agreeing with an anarchist on this is evidence of enough of how non-sectarian SDS' failures are.

Secondly, you were saying the same things a year ago, which suggests that progress hasn't actually been made in this regard, it's just a thin justification for involvement in the organization. As I said, SDS' most recent rhetoric is just as vapid and useless as it was a year ago, and your optimism is just as unfounded as it was a year ago. That's the point.

Lastly, SDS is a "radical" organization, but only that. They aren't relevant because in spite of the attention the liberal press has given them, they remain fully aloof to worker struggles around the country, they have failed to bring forth a revolutionary program or ideology and they are more worried about being PC than doing anything relevant or meaningful.


Your experience reading listserves is just textual readings of a handful of SDS members, it says nothing about its mass character or where its at.

That's silly. Listservs do show the events and campaigns that are happening, not to mention the decisions taken at the national conventions. That was one example of many, and if I only used that example, you might've had a point, but I didn't, so you don't.

And on the "mass character" of SDS, am I supposed to believe that outside of SDS' public rhetoric and campaigns, there's a hidden "mass character" that's actually revolutionary? I'd like to hear more about this "mass character", if you wouldn't mind. Perhaps it just needs to get out more.


And I'd like to second what Asoka has said. The original SDS was quite liberal too, I mean it had Todd Gitlin as president! The emergence of the PLP and the National Liberation Front of Vietnam's fight changed the whole character of SDS in a relative short frame of time. This has been true of many other students orgs too.

The PLP basically took over the organization, which is what gave it relevance in the first place if you ask me. That is not going to happen here, namely because this isn't the mid-sixties. Secondly, the first SDS had such a tremendous downfall because it was almost exclusively a student organization; having such young leadership is always going to be a problem. In short, even if your dream of re-taking over of the liberal SDS is a success, it will still have all the contradictions and fatal flaws of the first SDS.


Now you can come at it from the standpoint of developing a new ML youth group, I have no problem with that, but to have no relation to this blossoming mass organization is just downright not intelligble for me. There plenty of communist youth groups, none have a national or mass character.

The ML youth organization I work with isn't new, it's been around for decades, but that's beside the point.

I had a relation to what I thought was a blossoming mass organization, but it was abundantly clear that this was not the reality of the thing. SDS doesn't have the mass or national character you attribute to it, mostly because it's dominated by an anti-revolutionary mindset.

Like I said, I could call the College Democrats and Progressive Democrats for America and the College Greens "mass organizations" with "blossoming" revolutionary consciousnesses for the same reasons you've called SDS the same, but I'd be pretty off my rocker to do so. Why must you commit this same fallacy with SDS? Why do you have faith in this hidden and invisible "mass character" you keep telling me about?


Just to repeat a little Neruda "Only with a burning patience can we conquer the city."

I hope Maniac you readventure into SDS.:)

I don't think Neruda would want the SDS city, but that's my opinion. And if SDS does develop anything close to a revolutionary perspective, I will get involved with it again, but the cold reality is that this is not going to happen. PC anarcho-liberalism is the order of the day, and it is time Marxists and revolutionaries stopped wasting their time with such nonsense.

WintersDemise

I think the main point here is that Kasama is actively engaging with other groups, regardless of what ideologies the individual members follow. We all share common concerns, and it is under these common concerns we should unite.

So I should expect Kasama to work with the College Democrats, then? They DO have common concerns, and Kasama doesn't care what ideologies "individual members follow", correct? This is right up their alley then.

I can't wait for Kasama to infiltrate Amnesty International or Code Pink or any other two-bit liberal college club. The absurdity of this argument is enough to make me attend the next Democracy Matters meeting. :laugh:

[Winter]

WintersDemise
So I should expect Kasama to work with the College Democrats, then? They DO have common concerns, and Kasama doesn't care what ideologies "individual members follow", correct? This is right up their alley then.

I can't wait for Kasama to infiltrate Amnesty International or Code Pink or any other two-bit liberal college club. The absurdity of this argument is enough to make me attend the next Democracy Matters meeting. :laugh:

Obviously not reactionaries. I figured that was a given considering I'm posting at a revolutionary left forum.

Democrats do not have common concerns with revolutionaries. Democrats don't want to get rid of capitalism, they want to sugar-coat it. Also, they still want the government to declare war with countries for the sake of liberating the people, just look how successful that was in Iraq.

I think it's a good thing to unite all people who seek revolutionary change on issues of imperialism and exploitation. Transcending sectarianism is essential, otherwise we'd all just be little groups that pose minor agitation who never accomplish a thing. We may have different methods but the goals are the same. If we wish to gather up numbers, some compromises must be made. We are involved in an ever evolving, progressive movement, we should not worship movements of the past that took place in far different conditions.

I think it's time to stop being so sarcastic about a group who's actively out there trying to achieve something, I don't see anything constructive coming out of this.

[ShineThePath]

Listen Brother, lets try to be respectful about this and not degenerate this discussion.

That being said, once again you're makinf assumptions on little investigation. You're experience with SDS is a narrow experience and an experience which can easily mislead you about it. There is a definite reason I am saying similar things to last year, its still the same trajectory of SDS altogether. There are definite leaps in consciousness in its body, I am not sure how else i can really say this and how you can deny this, you have no basis for doing this besides prejudice brother.

Secondly on Kasama joining SDS, don't be an ass. First, I joined SDS long before I was participating in the discussions around the Kasama blog, and secondly there are no other people associated even loosely with Kasama that are part of SDS at the current moment. Hopefully this will actually change.

And your comparison of College Demorats to SDS is just stupid, honestly. You make little justification for this, and this is the last time I am bothering to actually comment on it. Its just sheer sectarianism.

[ShineThePath]

Also, not involved in workers' struggle?

This is incorrect, in fact SDS members are more involved in different forms of workers struggles than the ML organization you support, at least here in NYC this true. Sorry, but lets put this rightfully in this place, SDS is cleary a committed organization that supports different struggles of working people.

[manic expression]

Let me be clear, I'm not trying to disrespect you, I'm just trying to express my thoughts about SDS. This isn't personal for me, I hope you understand that. I apologize if I offended you or anything, but that wasn't my intention.

I think you're making an assumption when you assume that I've had a narrow experience with SDS. I've reviewed the words of the most prominent leaders of SDS, I've been in contact with dedicated SDSers and more. Please don't try to belittle my experience of SDS, it's not the issue here and both of us can agree on that.

On Kasama joining SDS, that wasn't addressed to you, it was to WintersDemise's post, which was vague at best. I didn't mention you in that portion of my post, precisely because you had nothing to do with it. Actually, I didn't assume you had a connection with Kasama, I just thought you agreed with the line.

The comparison with the College Democrats is quite ridiculous, but it is fitting IMO. Why? The College Democrats, like SDS, have a theoretical potential to become revolutionary and put forth a revolutionary platform; however, like SDS, they have innumerable ideological obstacles to doing so. Being "radical" doesn't make you revolutionary, and in SDS' case, this is true. I don't think you've responded to the concerns that Joe Hill's Ghost and I have brought forth, because they have to do with what SDS has developed into. You keep talking about the same "potential" you saw an entire year ago, while we're talking about the reality of the situation.

Also, I don't think it's sectarian when I'm agreeing with an anarchist. Don't you agree? The only reason I compare SDS to the College Democrats is because they both have vague anti-imperialist tendencies while retaining liberalism. I don't find the comparison unwarrented, and your response isn't exactly persuasive.


Listen Brother, lets try to be respectful about this and not degenerate this discussion.

That being said, once again you're makinf assumptions on little investigation. You're experience with SDS is a narrow experience and an experience which can easily mislead you about it. There is a definite reason I am saying similar things to last year, its still the same trajectory of SDS altogether. There are definite leaps in consciousness in its body, I am not sure how else i can really say this and how you can deny this, you have no basis for doing this besides prejudice brother.

Secondly on Kasama joining SDS, don't be an ass. First, I joined SDS long before I was participating in the discussions around the Kasama blog, and secondly there are no other people associated even loosely with Kasama that are part of SDS at the current moment. Hopefully this will actually change.

And your comparison of College Demorats to SDS is just stupid, honestly. You make little justification for this, and this is the last time I am bothering to actually comment on it. Its just sheer sectarianism.


Also, not involved in workers' struggle?

This is incorrect, in fact SDS members are more involved in different forms of workers struggles than the ML organization you support, at least here in NYC this true. Sorry, but lets put this rightfully in this place, SDS is cleary a committed organization that supports different struggles of working people.

I don't think they are, and I don't think they've proven me wrong. The only worker struggle they declared support for was Justice is Served (IIRC). From reading their second convention, you would never know that the miners were involved in a heavy fight, or that the meatpackers or textile workers or undocumented workers were knee-deep in organization drives.

As Joe Hill's Ghost said, SDS treats "class" like it does gender or ethnicity or sexual orientation or any other form of identity politics. It has no scientific or clear understanding of class and its dynamics in capitalist society, it concentrates on "hierarchy" and "oppression", which mostly manifests itself in self-flaggelation. In light of this, I disagree with you.