“You Say You Want a Revolution –
SDS, PL and Adventures in Building a Worker-Student Alliance,” edited by John Levin and Earl Silbar (2019)
This is a book of remembrances by 23
activists from different U.S.
cities radicalized by the 1960s and their involvement with Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) and Progressive Labor Party (PL).
PL was for a time the official Maoist organization in the U.S.,
which happened when it split from the Communist Party in the early 1960s. This is the first book that concentrates on
PL, adding to a number of memoirs on the New Communist Movement, RU/RCP, the SWP
and the CLP in the 1960s and 1970s.
The book’s value is in the
individual, but at the same time, common stories they share. The amount of useful left-wing work described
here is extraordinary – the first demonstration against the Vietnam war; the
first trip to Cuba; the formation of the first anti-imperialist student
organization, M2M; PL’s strong role in campus SDS, an example being the San
Francisco State strike; activism in the reactionary U.S. south and work in the U.S. army against the war; opposition to
HUAC; work at a GE plant and glancing references to Bill Epton and the Harlem
Rebellion. The list is multiple.
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| But Not Like the Beatles... |
There are a number of general
themes. One is the fondness most
ex-members and fellow travelers seemed to have had for Mao ZeDong at the time, a fondness
that has faded or disappeared. The
second is an understanding of the difference between the more middle-class hippie
counter-culture and the more working-class political protest culture of the
time. The third is the growing awareness
of PL’s very undemocratic and sectarian functioning. Very few of the writers link this to PL’s
historical and ideological roots - a number think the problem might be ‘Lenin.’
No one mentions Stalin. The concept of ultra-leftism is never
mentioned either.
Fourth is the important role PL
played in their political development, a ‘basic course’ in Marxism and class
understanding that countered the middle-class ‘youth’ or adventurist politics
of other factions in SDS. Most
importantly, the continued participation in progressive efforts by most of these
individuals gives the lie to the corporate myth that every ‘60s and ‘70s
radical ‘sold out.’ They did not by a
long shot.
The memoirs mostly focus on the
period between 1967 to 1970, with minimal references outside that time period. PL’s efforts in the 1970s against the war, the
Detroit Mack Avenue sit-down, the Boston busing project, nationwide efforts
against racist IQ tests and anti-racist / anti-fascist work in INCAR are not
mentioned. The remembrances are centered
in 5 places – Texas, San
Francisco, Iowa, New
York and Boston. Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, LA, Philadelphia and other
cites where PL had branches are not included here.
Like the rest of the Maoist/
Trotskyist/ Marxist/ Stalinist hard-left of the day, within PL most members and
supporters did not really know what was going on outside their own city unless
they read the ‘heroic’ distortions in Challenge/Desafio,
PL’s newspaper. Nor did they know what
other left groups were doing, so the ability to have a national and even
international organizational and political understanding was impaired.
There is one very funny and
obnoxious remembrance here, wedged in among the more straight-forward. This is a valuable book for present activists
or cadre who want to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the Maoist left
of that day, issues which also reflect on present organizations and politics. After all, this is not the first go-round…
Full disclosure:
I was a ‘grunt’ member of SDS/ PL/ WSA/ INCAR from 1971 to 1978, then
went on to join the OCIC, support the Spartacist League, join the Marcy-inspired
RCL(I), join Socialist Action, join the Communist Party and lastly join LPA,
then the Labor Party, before volunteering at May Day Books. At present I see Marxism as the best approach to politics. I'm refraining from analyzing PL from a more personal perspective in this review.
Other reviews on this topic, below: “Heavy
Radicals,” “Revolution in the Air,” “The Communist Necessity,” “A Threat of the
First Magnitude,” “Maoism and the Chinese Revolution,” “Is the East Still Red,” “The Fall of Bo
Xilai,” “The Rise of China.”
Use blog search box, upper left.
And I bought it at May Day Books!
(Only Mpls. bookstore to carry this book right now!)
Red Frog
February 8, 2019
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