Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
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Markin comment on this article:
This article is place here mainly to give a flavor of the times (early 1970s) when every self-respecting extra-parliamentary leftist was struggling to find the road to the working class. There were plenty of groups, committees, leagues, tendencies and what not to the left of the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party (both dismissed almost out of hand as too tame for revolutionary hearts based on practical experience of trying to break with the Democrats and other so-called progressives in order to bring THEIR house down).The general comments, and specific insights, could have been written by me, or any number of leftist militants, back then as we struggled to break out of the youth vanguard milieu and learn a couple of things about politics.
I do not remember much about the Labor Committee or about Lynn Marcus, having not run into that particular group at the time, except that later Marcus and his coterie surfaced in Illinois capturing some Democratic Party primary nomination based on an eclectic, and anti-working class, mishmash. But that point the group had moved well outside the parameters of the left. Not the first, and probably not the last time, individuals and groups,that started left and moved right, way right. The best part of the article though is the point about “guru” Marcus claiming to be something like the first Marxist since Marx on the basis of some flimsy formulations. We have also all seen that phenomenon, as well. Remember this: guys like Marcus just muddy the waters and in the process waste precious cadre who, for one reason or another, get catch up in such movements-before they burn out or just go off the deep end. Take this as a cautionary tale.
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From the Revolutionary Communist Youth Newsletter (forebear of the Spartacus Youth Clubs), Number 9, October-November 1971.
Marcus And The Labor Committee:Crackpot Social-Democracy
To call Marcus an obscurantist is an understatement on the order of calling Hitler mischievous. But there are more serious things wrong with Marcus and the Labor Committee. We find that the membership of the Marcusite Labor Committee is subjectively alien to revolutionary socialism, and therefore have not written much on them previously. But the fact that they are acting as a pole of attraction for ex-PLers and other young radicals indicates that a deeper analysis of this group is necessary. The Marcusites generally possess a wise-guy operator quality which prevents them from becoming Bolsheviks. If the average ISer tends to be a dilettante, the average Marcusite tends to be a hustler. Despite enormous political differences, we respect Progressive Labor because of the strength of their proletarian revolutionary impulses. As Trotsky said of some French Marcus types among his erstwhile followers, "Revolutionaries may be either educated or ignorant people, either intelligent or dull; but there can be no revolutionaries without the will that breaks obstacles, without devotion, without the spirit of sacrifice.' In a certain sense, a lack of revolutionary will and dedication can be more decisive than formal political and theoretical differences, although such attitudes also inevitably manifest themselves in the sharpest political differences.
Marcus — Self-Proclaimed Genius
Marcus, after spending time in the SWP as an inactive right-winger, joined Wohlforth after the latter had left the SWP to form what is now the Workers League, and became the principal theoretician of the Wohlforth tendency. Marcus and Wohlforth, during their collaboration in '65-'66, claimed they were in the Iskra period, by which they meant they should act as brain-trusters for the rest of the left. This concept is a consistent pillar of Marcusism, the contention that his claim to leadership rests on his being smarter than everybody else. Marcus uses Marxian economics the way Wohlforth uses Marxian philosophy, presenting it in a deliberately obscurantist manner, claiming it represents the key to the American revolution and only he and his disciples have mastered it. On a formal level, Marcus (like Wohlforth) is a rational idealist maintaining that if one understands reality one can control it, independent of the actualities of social power and interests: the perfect philosophy for an enlightened advisor to bureaucrats.
After the break with Wohlforth, Marcus joined the Spartacist League for a brief period, breaking with it over unanimous opposition to his position that the trouble with the Castroites was that Castro didn't know enough Marxian economics to maneuver successfully in the world market. This is the exact opposite of the truth-it is precisely the pressure upon a weak and isolated workers' state to adapt to bourgeois world hegemony that provides the impulse for Stalinism.
The Marcusite "United Front"
After breaking with organized Trotskyism, Marcus set up organizations which used the magic slogan "united front" as a short-cut to expected miracles of political organizing. Des¬pite grandiose goals, the West Side Tenants Union, the Garment Center Organizing Commit¬tee and so on came to nothing except passing out a lot of paper.
The LC's "United Fronts" have usually taken on a thoroughly dishonest front group character. The Marcusites have proven they will split from any "united front" if they don't like its program. When we organized a strike support action with the LC, along with the International Socialists and some Columbia U. independents, the LC simply pulled out its forces, because they feared our demands against the persecution of the Panthers, against the war and for a workers' party would alienate the liberal bourgeoisie they wanted to pull in. A united front is only a bloc of organizations to achieve a particular end, preserving the right to criticize one another and raise one's full program. By transforming a united front into a single issue organization, the LC can plausibly impose its lowest common denominator, economist politics in the same man¬ner as the SWP.
The Strike Support Coalition
The LC's strike support coalition is merely a more sophisticated version of PL's "worker-student alliance." From the IWW and the Socialist Labor Party to Marcus, attempts to establish outside organizations which will substitute for the existing unions have been Utopian. They have also been Utopian in that they offer an attractive, apparent short-cut to the hard job of fighting for leadership in the unions. The LC's politics are strongly motivated by its cadres' desire to mam tain petty-bourgeois life styles while enjoying the illusion that they can lead large numbers of workers.
The Marcusites claim that unions, because of their particularist character, are structurally incapable of organizing the outside support needed to win a strike. This is inverted syndical ism, seeking an organizational solution to a political problem. In most major strikes (e. g. the GM and GE strikes) the union has enough bargaining power to win the strike. It is the union bureaucrats whose social position forces them to compromise the interests of the workers. If the union leaderships wanted to bring in other workers or students, they could organize that far better than any outside group.
"Socialist Reconstruction"
Until recently, a characteristic aspect of the LC's propaganda was "socialist reconstruction." They insisted that policies directed at improving the efficiency of the American economy (usually through some crackpot fiscal gimmick) were necessary because a), people were hostile to socialism because they didn't think socialism could run the economy constructively and b). people would not support the demands of particular workers for fear that it would reduce their own incomes. The first proposition is inane and the second fails to see that workers can be won to supporting social struggles they are not involved in out of a sense of elementary class solidarity and hostility to the ruling class rather than out of calculated consumerist interests. The postal wildcat had widespread sympathy among large sections of the population, who were not worried about the price of stamps. It is important that the labor movement not be held responsible for the health of the economy and that the ruling class not be allowed to blame workers' militancy for unemployment, inflation, etc. We are in favor of socialist reconstruction in a soc¬ialist society. To even imply that economic policy under capitalism can be part of a socialist reconstruction policy legitimizes all forms of state interference.
"Outside support" is so vague a term as to be practically meaningless. The most effective outside support is secondary strike and boycott action by other workers. But to organize a wildcat on behalf of workers in other unions requires an extra-ordinary level of class consciousness and effective union organization. What the LC really means by outside support is merely good public relations. The LC literally presents itself to the left bureaucrats as public relations men promising to present their case so that it appears sympathetic and beneficial to the "public." The LC refuses to attack imperialism, racial oppression or the Democratic Party because this would threaten their "respectability" and compromise their role as union public relations men.
Outside groups can only engage in effective strike support with the cooperation of the workers' leaders. Since most strikes are firmly con¬trolled by union bureaucrats, who will not co¬operate with reds who attack them, genuine revolutionaries are usually limited to outside propaganda unless they have comrades in the striking unions. The LC has sought to win the cooperation of union bureaucrats by not fighting them. Their high point thus far was in the Newark Teachers' Strike, where they ran around chaperoning Orrie Chambers, the NTU organizer, from campus to campus. The NTU leadership made a de facto alliance with the Imperiale forces, a group of anti-Black vigilantes with real proto-fascist tendencies. Two members of the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus were physically assaulted by Imperiale supporters, while six members of the LC stood by!
Blacks and Women: "Dog Liberation"?
In a leaflet satirizing the SWP, the LC likened the black liberation movement with "dog liberation" as if the treatment of blacks in American society should be of no more concern to social¬ists than the treatment of animals. By consistently failing to oppose the oppression of blacks and women, the LC is openly catering to working-class backwardness.
The Marcusites have systematically overstated the degree to which black nationalism and anarcho-Maoism could contribute to American fascism. Tony Pappert wrote a polemic against Mark Rudd in the pages of New America, the paper of the CIA-supported, pro-war Socialist Party. By continually identifying the ultra-New Left with fascism, the Marcusites bear some of the responsibility for the repression against them.
Marcus has recently moved well to the right, abandoning his "socialist reconstruction" rhetoric and limiting himself to purely defensive postures on the grounds that fascism is imminent. The Socialist Labor Committee split is to the left of the LC's current line, reflecting the academic-technocratic socialism of the earlier Marcus.
The Marcusites do not deserve any respect or serious consideration from anyone consider¬ing himself a revolutionary. Their cadre tend toward personal hustlerism, lacking the will and dedication required of communists. Marcus1 world-view is technocratic rationalism, a form of idealism particularly well suited to intellectuals desirous of advising men in power; their conception of leading workers through outside propaganda and organizations alone has been well proven historically bankrupt; and by deli¬berately catering to racism, chauvinism and other reactionary attitudes within the working class the Marcusites have forfeited any claim they may make to being any sort of leadership in the struggle for socialism.
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