From The Archives Of The Vietnam G.I. Anti-War Movement-"G.I. Voice"-The Sparacist League's Anti-War Work Among G.I.s-By Way Of An Introduction- "Better Red Than Fred."

Click on the headline to link to the G.I. Voice archival website for an outline copy of the issue mentioned in the headline. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me. *******
G.I. Voice was published by the Spartacist League for about one year starting in 1969 and ending in 1970. They published 7 issues total and represented the SL’s attempt to intervene with their politics inside the U.S. Army then occupying and fighting brutal war in Vietnam. There was a growing G.I. anti-war movement and this was in part the SL’s attempt to win over militant G.I.s to the views of the SL.

—Riazanov Library******
Markin comment on this series:

In a funny way this American Left History blog probably never have come into existence if it was not for the Vietnam War, the primary radicalizing agent of my generation, the generation of ’68, and of my personal radicalization by military service during that period. I was, like many working class youth, especially from the urban Irish neighborhoods, drawn to politics as a career, bourgeois politics that is, liberal or not so liberal. Radicalism, or parts of it, was attractive but the “main chance” for political advancement in this country was found elsewhere. I, also like many working class youth then, was drafted into the military, although I, unlike most, balked, and balked hard at such service one I had been inducted. That event is the key experience that has left me still, some forty years later, with an overarching hatred of war, of American imperialist wars in particular, and with an overweening desire to spend my time fighting, fighting to the end against the “monster.”

Needless to say, in the late 1960s, although there was plenty of turmoil over the war on American (and world-wide) campuses and other student-influenced hang-outs and enclaves and that turmoil was starting to be picked among American soldiers, especially drafted soldiers, once they knew the score there was an incredible dearth of information flowing back and forth between those two movements. I, personally, had connections with the civilian ant-war movement, but most anti-war GIs were groping in the dark, groping in the dark on isolated military bases (not accidentally placed in such areas) or worst, in the heat of the battle zone in Vietnam. We could have used a ton more anti-war propaganda geared to our needs, legal, political, and social. That said, after my “retirement” from military service I worked, for a while, with the anti-war GI movement through the coffeehouse network based around various military bases.

During that time (very late 1960s and first few years of the 1970s) we put out, as did other more organized radical and revolutionary organizations, much literature about the war, imperialism, capitalism, etc., some good, some, in retrospect, bad or ill-put for the audience we were trying to target. What we didn’t do, or I didn’t do, either through carelessness or some later vagabond existence forgetfulness was save this material for future reference. Thus, when I happened upon this Riazanov Library material I jumped at the opportunity of posting it. That it happens to be Spartacist League/International Communist League material is not accidental, as I find myself in sympathy with their political positions, especially on war issues, more often than not. I, however, plan to scour the Internet for other material, most notably from the U. S. Socialist Workers Party and Progressive Labor Party, both of whom did some anti-war GI work at that time. There are others, I am sure. If the reader has any such anti-war GI material, from any war, just pass it along.
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Markin comment on this article:

By 1968, a time by the way when this writer was deeply immersed in bourgeois politics at first through the campaign of Robert Kennedy and then, after his assassination in June 1968, the Hubert Humphrey campaign (ya, I know I still blush, blush profusely over that every time I think about it, but thems the facts Jack), the Socialist Workers Party and others were appealing to American soldiers to join the anti-Vietnam War movement. Was that notion based on the idea that the soldiers were the key agents in any strategy to, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued in World War I, “turn the guns the other way?” No way, GIs were “invited” to join as just another constituency (and very nice symbolically to lead the parade) in the endless mass marches strategy that was the hallmark of that organization in those days. The problem is that when you have a mass movement strategy that includes everyone from housewives to hardened bourgeois Democratic Party representatives (or Republicans, for that matter, if any could be found), especially the latter, you are not going to be able to provide that “big tent” without burying your politics. Particularly when the “guns that are going to be turned around” will be aimed (figuratively, if not literally) at those very politicians that are gracing the platform you have provided for them. See, I may have not been “wise” then but I have learned a few things since then-get to the soldiers. Break with the Democrats (Republicans should have been broken with when you were about twelve) ! Break with party of war and occupation!