Friday, February 8, 2019

Maoism in Retrospect

“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. 

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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