OnThe 50th Annivesary Of The May Days In France-May 1968, Student Power and the Working Class- A "Generation Of '68" Commentary

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the Students For a Democratic Society (SDS), Old Believers edition.

Commentary

I just recently posted a note passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee concerning some student activity at Evergreen State College in Washington (Defend the Evergreen State College 6, June 7, 2008). There a number of students have been charged with offenses stemming from an incident last winter. Those charges, brought after what appears to be a police riot on that small out-of-the-way liberal campus, should be dropped. Moreover, ominously, the Evergreen State College administration has banned a chapter of the Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) from campus. The details are fuzzy but some students have staged an occupation (shades of Columbia 1968?). Any more up-to-date information is welcome here. Again, all militants must call for the defense of the right of leftist political organizations to exist on campus. Those are the minimum demands we pose today around this case.

This case, however, also brings to this old militant’s mind some reflections on the student movement of forty years ago, the campus struggles of the Generation of ’68 that I am seemingly endlessly commenting on this year. One of the slogans that the Evergreen State students have been putting forth is the notion of ‘student power’. I am not quite sure what that entails in the minds of the students out there but I assume that it is some variation of students having more input into the day-to-day operations of the campus. That my friends, in any case, is usually always a good democratic propaganda point to fight around- on the road to socialism. And that combination will, in the end, be the point that I want to make here.

It is rather a truism that politics abhors a vacuum. In a proper political universe the Evergreen struggle would be taken up, as a matter of course, by any workers party worth its salt. Today, in the absence of any other social force committed to speaking in alliance with them the students have correctly moved on their own. Thus, confronted with a non-responsive campus administration the beginning of wisdom for leftist student activists is to demand more say in what is going on, and to be left alone while doing it. However, it is also true that one should try, as previous student generations,in some individual cases willfully so, have not, to learn the lessons of history.

The question of 'student power' is hardly a new one and that is where references to the 1960’s are very germane. The 1960’s on campuses throughout the world represented the highest expression of the fight for student power. There were more theories about students as the ‘new’ working class and about the inviolability of the ‘red’ university than one could shake a stick at. Moreover, many of the early anti-Vietnam War struggles in this country were focused on the campus. The right of students to more say in the university furthermore got fully explored in the famous Columbia occupations led by Mark Rudd and SDS in 1968. In the end, however, power flowed back to the university administration. In Europe, that same year, another student uprising culminating in the May General Strike in France even more dramatically highlighted the struggle for student power. Again, power flowed back to the French capitalist state. Some ‘uppity’ students also ignited earlier struggles in France and other parts of Europe going back to the early 19th century revolutionary movements, and those effort, for the most part, failed as well.

Now that I have paid proper respect to the vices and virtues of student activism we have to come to the question of power. In short, do students control the life of the campuses today? It is almost silly to pose that question at this point. So what is the road forward? For this the May General Strike in France is illustrative. The students led the initial actions but until the social power of the working class was thrown into the balance the students were spinning their wheels. And that is the question of power in a nutshell. Until the issues that engaged the students got linked up to the social power of the working class they could not fundamentally get resolved. Although we know that the French Communist Party, in the end, sold out both workers and students the notion that students, by themselves, could fundamental change society took a beating.

The world-wide impact of the May events in France were moreover reflected in this country. SDS and the bulk radical student movement, including this son of the working class, had previously contemptuously written off the working class as hopelessly bought off or organically incapable of using its social power to change society. Sound familiar? After May the more serious student elements started dusting off their old text books that contained some words about the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, Lenin, the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution. And they were not wrong to do so.

That is what is missing in today’s student analysis of the way to obtain social power, the obviously limitation of the student power slogan. With the demise of the Soviet Union and other workers states the crying need for socialist solutions to the world’s problems, Marxism, communism and the like have been written off as failed experiments. That is why those Evergreen students, as sincere as they are in their struggles, can resurrect the student power slogan without embarrassment.

Let me make a point that shows this problem in graphic detail. Long ago, in the late 1960's, ostensible revolutionaries brought up the slogan on the campuses for worker/student/ teacher control of educational institutions(I believe that it was first brought up by Progressive Labor but I may be wrong). That is, in fact, a correct and worthy slogan. But here is the reality. Under what conditions would that slogan make more than propaganda sense? The answer- in a situation where the campuses were being nationalized under workers control.

Let’s me just present a concrete example, for now, though by way of illustration. Make a call for the nationalization of Harvard, as the young revolutionaries of the Spartacus Youth Clubs do today. But do not link that call with the struggle for a workers party and a workers government. Now, I hope, you get the point. The bourgeoisie will no more voluntarily nationalize its Harvards, its traditional sacred stomping grounds for creating its administrative elite than it will do any other progressive things. To challenge their exclusive 'right' to do so sounds to these ears like something that, in the end, can only be resolved by civil war. Under those conditions can students struggle for power by themselves? To pose the question is to give the answer. Students, right now, today make the leap and link up your struggles with those of the working class. Or, and I will play the role of professor now- at least think about it. Meanwhile- Defend the Evergreen State College 6!

From The-Archives Berkeley 2009, This Is Not Your Parents' Berkeley 1969

Commentary

A couple of months ago(see archives for November 13, 2008) I did a review of the film documentary “Berkeley in the Sixties” that took an, on the whole, positive look at the social activism that drove some members of my political generation, “the generation of ’68". My purpose in that review, as is the general purpose of this blog, was to highlight for this generation coming of political age in the Obamiad the kinds of struggles that were necessary then in order to have any kind of shot at creating a more just society. We, as everyone is painfully aware today, failed. However, as I pointed out it was no accident that when things got heated up, particularly around opposition to the Vietnam War, Berkeley was until 1969, at least, at the epicenter of radical student opposition to those running this society.

Certain towns, mainly college towns or their environs, have historically acted as “sanctuaries” for the offbeat, the marginal, the radical, the left out and, frankly, the tired and burned out. One thinks of Ann Arbor, Madison, the University of Chicago, Harvard Square, Greenwich Village at various times and today additionally places like Durham, North Carolina and Austin, Texas. Moreover, in tough times like we have just been through with the Bush Administration those oases are necessary against the onslaught of the main culture. In its time Berkeley was the epitome of all that was fresh, strong, articulate and thoughtful about the way forward politically. Alas, as the article below gleaned from a local Boston newspaper makes abundantly clear today’s Berkeley is a very different place.

I made a point in the above-mentioned film review to note that after the People’s Park defeat in 1969 Berkeley kind of fell off the political map. Partially that was due to an ellipse of the student movement as the center of political struggle, as the whole society seemed to come unglued. But mainly it was due to an unorganized and messy political retreat of activists, once they realized how hard it was going to defeat this imperialist “monster”, going off to their own sectoral "sandbox" politics. And waiting in those enclaves for that “someday” in order to join up the various struggles. They are apparently, at last check, still waiting. But enough of that for now. As the comments by some of the interviewees in this article indicate that point that I made earlier about “sanctuaries” applies to the tired and burned out as well as those with fresh idea. Well, even an old leftie like I can read the writing on the wall- for now- and recognize that today’s Berkeley is obviously not your parents’ Berkeley. But, I still have this nagging question after reading this article- After Obama fizzles, what are you going to do?

“Something New Brews In Berkeley: Patriotic Pride", Sasha Issenberg, Boston Globe, Sunday January 4, 2009


BERKELEY, Calif. - The hundreds who massed at the University of California on election night responded to Barack Obama's victory by heading off on a route that has been for a generation the sacred way for the activist left: out the campus gates, through Sproul Plaza, and down Telegraph Avenue toward People's Park.
By the time they arrived at the intersection of Telegraph and Durant avenues, where a tie-dyed vendor occupies one corner, it became clear they did not come to challenge the system now preparing to consecrate a new regime in Washington. At one point, a man scaled a lamppost and unfurled the Stars and Stripes. The crowd broke out in the national anthem.

"People finally felt like our generation had reclaimed patriotism," said Haley Fagan, 24, a Berkeley paralegal who got stuck in a car trying to cross the street as the crowd surged. "It was a moment that we felt comfortable with it."

After generations of finding their voice in dissidence, some on America's left wing are adjusting not only to a new, post election comfort with patriotic symbols, but the political reality they represent. Believing in Obama after inauguration day will mean identifying with the machinery of American power.

"There's a left-wing tradition of being systematically opposed to the US government, knee-jerk reactionary - most of our presidents have made it fairly easy to do," said Jo Freeman, author of "At Berkeley in the Sixties," a memoir of her student activism. "Those who view everything the US does as automatically suspect already have a problem doing that with Obama."

At Berkeley, the university has, quite deliberately, chosen to host its first-ever large-scale observance of a presidential inauguration in a spot most closely identified with its radicalism, said Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau. At Sproul Plaza, site of the self-described Free Speech Movement protests beginning in 1964 - now commemorated with a monument declaring "this soil and the air space above it should not be part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction" - students will gather around giant television screens to take in the nation's most solemn ritual.

"It will be a patriotic celebration," Birgeneau said in an interview. "That small circle will now be surrounded by a lot of students who are happy to be members of a nation that just elected its first African-American president."

Not since Franklin Roosevelt turned the federal government into an aggressive agent of liberalism - pushing the New Deal at home and confronting fascism abroad - has the left felt such a deep attachment and invested such hopes in a head of state.

"People in the '30s felt that for once the government was on their side," Pulitzer Prize-winning Berkeley historian Leon F. Litwack said in an interview. "They had never had that kind of relationship to a president before."

Disagreements with American foreign policy, particularly in Vietnam, fueled a cynicism about American might and its trappings, said Litwack. He has written in praise of Free Speech Movement leaders for "eschewing the conventional flag-waving, mindless, orchestrated patriotism. . . . They defined loyalty to one's country as disloyalty to its pretenses, a willingness to unmask its leaders, and a calling to subject its institutions, government, and wars to critical examination, not only the decisions made by rulers but often their indecision."

Such a view of patriotism was so hardened in Berkeley - where, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Fire Department removed flags from its trucks for fear that they could become targets of antiwar demonstrators - that a gathering of College Republicans made the front page of the Los Angeles Times in 2003 for walking down Telegraph waving flags and singing "America the Beautiful" as a sardonic provocation.

A similar, if earnest, display on election night "did strike me as funny and ironic," said Mark Rudd, who organized campus protests in the 1960s as a national leader of Students for a Democratic Society. "For the last eight years - and probably for much longer - most radicals have been mourning for our country. . . . Obviously the empire is not going to fall overnight, but at least there's been a popular vote that changes the direction of the last 40 years."

The Star Market, a small Berkeley grocery with a robust selection of legumes, recently posted next to its cash register a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle imploring readers to fly the Stars and Stripes on the day of Obama's inauguration. "In recent times, our flag has been displayed more by one side of the political spectrum than the other," wrote Paul Templeton of Berkeley. "Let's rescue it from unreflective, knee-jerk patriotism."

Such spontaneous patriotism was the reaction to Obama's victory for many in neighborhoods where displays of Tibetan nationalism had been more common than its American equivalent. Election-night revelers in Harvard Square sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." Those in West Philadelphia chanted "USA.!" A celebrating mob in Manhattan's Union Square screamed, "This is what democracy looks like," emptied of the sarcasm that made it a favorite refrain of anti-globalization protestors.

"I think part of the new patriotism of the left is a function of folks recognizing how much certain things mattered to them - the Constitution, due process, separation of powers, basic legal and human rights - once they have been taken away, or at least radically threatened," said Jeremy Varon, a Drew University historian and editor of "The Sixties," a scholarly journal.

"We are used to alienation, but Bush has engendered an alienation so profound it has nearly shattered many of us and called us to defend core aspects of our polity that we thought were sacrosanct," Varon said. "Election night was the cathartic undoing of all that: a way to say, in Whitman-esque communion with our national identity, 'We too sing America!' "

In a photo now on the front of his website, folk singer Richie Havens stands before a large flag outside his New Jersey polling place, giving a thumbs-up after voting. Havens, 67, said he is excited to see Obama sworn in, but that the change in government is merely catching up with the democracy of popular culture.

"We are probably the first country in the world getting the chance to formalize our change," Havens said.

There are signs that Obama's success not only increased voter turnout, but has made citizens more interested in being part of government. His transition office has reported that more than 300,000 people have submitted their resumes via the Internet for federal jobs. A study this year by Harvard's Institute of Politics showed that about one-third of those between 18 and 24 were interested in joining a national, state, or local bureaucracy.

"These students are optimists," said Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow, who on election night watched students march by his house on campus singing "God Bless America" and "America the Beautiful." "They don't have an idealistic view of the country. At the same time, I don't think they're cynical in the way prior generations were cynical."

As opposed to the largely upper-middle-class white students who propelled the 1960s counterculture, leftist students today are more likely to come from working-class and immigrant backgrounds and see college as a route into the middle class, according to Birgeneau.

"They don't come here as radicals who are going to overturn the system," said the UC-Berkeley chancellor. "These students want to be successful. They seem to have realized that working within the system is the way to do so. The Obama victory is evidence to them that that works."

At Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20, many who have, in the past, used such occasions to rambunctiously question American power are likely to be silently saluting its transfer.

"They've already got the permits," said Freeman, who joined anti-Bush protests at his 2004 inauguration but expects to be in Washington this time as merely a spectator. "But I'm going to be looking forward to seeing what the signs say."

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-“Campus Spartacist”-(Final Issue, 1971)

Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online 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 and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist

Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.

—Riazanov Library
******
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.
*********
Markin comment on this issue re-posting a June 8, 2011 American Left History entry that contains
key points on the question of revolutionary class struggle defense policy:

From The Partisan Defense Committee "Class Struggle Defense" Archives- What Defense Policy for Revolutionaries?-"An Injury To One Is An Injury To All"
Markin comment:The several documents presented in this compilation cover a wide range of issues that confront any serious left-wing class struggle defense organization committed to non-sectarian defense based on the old Wobblie (and maybe before the Wobblies, around the time of the Haymarket martyrs if an article that I have read lately is any indication) of “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Most of those issues have been adequately addressed in one form or another by the writers and/or editors of the documents.

There is one point, however, mentioned here that I would like to highlight a little more based on my own long- time experience with legal defense cases, work, given the dearth of more direct class-struggle issues, that has consumed much more of my political time (and that of others who I have spoken to on the matter) lately than I would have expected. That is the question of “hiding” the relationship between the defense organization and the political organization leading up the case, the question of front groups. Most of these radical legal cases from defense of the Panthers back in the 1960s to the latest death penalty cases start with some leftist organization’s impetus.

Those seeking to center their campaigns on beseeching hard-core liberal support (and some vital cash nexus that goes with seeking such support) will “hide’ their “parent” organizational affiliations and “pretend” the cause is a simple democratic one. The Stalinists of the Communist Party, after their short bout with “third period” purity in the late 1920s were past masters of this technique. The clearest example of this that I can give, and that radicals today might either remember or be somewhat familiar with, was the Angela Davis case in connection with her involvement with the Jonathan Jackson (George Jackson’s brother)/Sam Melville Brigade. Now Angela Davis was then, and now, a hard Stalinist and then a leading public member of the party. One would have thought that her party affiliation would have been front and center since everybody knew it anyway.

And, more importantly, that those Communist Party members working on this important campaign would have identified themselves proudly with their fellow comrade. Well, I guess you cannot teach an old dog new tricks as the worn-out adage goes. At least a Stalinist old dog. One meeting that I went to concerning her defense had about fifty people in attendance. Some liberals, known to me. Some unaffiliated radicals, also known to me. And the rest CPers. Except, if you were not politically savvy you would not have known that last fact because not one CPer, not one identified him or herself as such. Oh sure there were representatives from the Croatian Anti-Fascist League, The League For International Peace, Mothers for Peace and the like. Yes, you guessed it all CPers. And to what end? You see, maybe the liberals could be fooled, or wanted to be, and maybe even a few radicals who believe in some “family of the left” notion of politics, as well. But when the deal goes down the bourgeoisie is not fooled, not by a long shot. And then not only are you defending one comrade but the whole organization. So learn a new trick, okay?

Note:
An additional twist on the CP's catering to the liberals in the Angela Davis case was that they left class-war prisoner Ruchell McGee, Ms. Davis' co-defendant, to basically fend for himself. His profile would not have gone down as well with such elements enamored with celebrity Davis. I also note that forty years later I am still calling for Ruchell McGee's freedom as part of my June Class-War Prisoners series. Enough said.

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-“Campus Spartacist”-(Austin, January 1971)

Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online 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 and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist

Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.

—Riazanov Library
******
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.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:

As I have noted on numerous other occasions, including in yesterday’s commentary in this series (see archives, July 7, 2011), I am a proud son of the working class, of the desperate working poor segment of that class to boot. Nevertheless I had written off the working class as a factor in my early political schemes. That is until 1969. And even then, as I noted in an earlier installment of commentaries on this series (see archives, July 3, 2011), I was only “toying” with Marxism in that year. And part of that “toying” was a rather hard-headed approach to the capacities of the American working class (others, like the French and Italian, I was more agnostic on) to make a socialist revolution, and keep it.

Always implicit in the Marxist worldview of the centrality of the working class in the overthrow of the capitalist system is the notion that this class itself would have to break with its former traditions under capitalism. In short, to break with such notions as a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” using trade unions as merely the best (at least for America since the early 1900’s) arenas for socialists to work in to bring class consciousness, revolutionary class consciousness, to working people. That was initially my problem with the Marxist worldview, that notion that revolutionaries should work in the trade unions to bring class consciousness to the workers. Or, maybe, at a more fundamental level, that “bringing” a class, or any other social formation for that matter, anything, much less a revolutionary solution, a, frankly, desperate revolutionary solution to their problems, seemed way too, I will be kind, esoteric.

It seemed on the face of it an improbable strategy, but only, as I did at the time, if one looked through the static situation of the class in any given period. A closer study of the Russian Revolution of 1917, of the work of the Bolsheviks since the aborted revolution of 1905, and of the necessity of a vanguard party (as opposed to a mass, all-purpose, all-inclusive workers party) broke me, somewhat, somewhat kicking and screaming really, to see this other way of organizing. And through fits and starts, successes and a rather longer number of failures, that notion, that vanguard notion, still makes sense. If we can just get enough cadres together to help pull it off.

Additional Note:

This five-point program presented by the Austin RMC, culminating in the fight for a labor party, was just such a counter-posed program to attract serious student militants at the time. Particularly when PL, the CP, the SWP, and others had lost their moorings and began to cater to what? Liberalism, narrow campus-issue-ism, social-workerism, and so on. In the next student upsurge, or general working class upsurge, that we have seen just the glimmer of signs of this year with the public workers union struggles we will need just such a program to attract, and keep, serious militants.

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-“Campus Spartacist”-(Austin, November 1970)

Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online 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 and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist

Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.

—Riazanov Library
******
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.
*****
Markin comment on this issue:

As I have noted on numerous other occasions, including in yesterday’s commentary in this series (see archives, July 5, 2011), I am a proud son of the working class, of the desperate working poor segment of that class to boot. Nevertheless I had written off the working class as a factor in my early political schemes. That is until 1969. And even then, as I noted in an earlier installment of commentaries on this series (see archives, July 3, 2011), I was only “toying” with Marxism in that year. And part of that “toying” was a rather hard-headed approach to the capacities of the American working class (others, like the French and Italian, I was more agnostic on) to make a socialist revolution, and keep it.

Always implicit in the Marxist worldview of the centrality of the working class in the overthrow of the capitalist system is the notion that this class itself would have to break with its former traditions under capitalism. In short, to break with such notions as a “fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” using trade unions as merely the best (at least for America since the early 1900’s) arenas for socialists to work in to bring class consciousness, revolutionary class consciousness, to working people. That was initially my problem with the Marxist worldview, that notion that revolutionaries should work in the trade unions to bring class consciousness to the workers. Or, maybe, at a more fundamental level, that “bringing” a class, or any other social formation for that matter, anything, much less a revolutionary solution, a, frankly, desperate revolutionary solution to their problems, seemed way too, I will be kind, esoteric.

It seemed on the face of it an improbable strategy, but only, as I did at the time, if one looked through the static situation of the class in any given period. A closer study of the Russian Revolution of 1917, of the work of the Bolsheviks since the aborted revolution of 1905, and of the necessity of a vanguard party (as opposed to a mass, all-purpose, all-inclusive workers party) broke me, somewhat, somewhat kicking and screaming really, to see this other way of organizing. And through fits and starts, successes and a rather longer number of failures, that notion, that vanguard notion, still makes sense. If we can just get enough cadres together to help pull it off.

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-“Campus Spartacist”-(Austin, September 1970)

Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online 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 and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist

Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.

—Riazanov Library
******
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.
******
Markin comment on this issue, addressing the question posed in the second section about the SWP's political defense work, or lack of it in the case described, I will refer to the comment made in another entry, June 9, 2001):

From The Partisan Defense Committee "Class Struggle Defense" Archives- What Defense Policy for Revolutionaries?-"An Injury To One Is An Injury To All" Markin comment:

The several documents presented in this compilation cover a wide range of issues that confront any serious left-wing class struggle defense organization committed to non-sectarian defense based on the old Wobblie (and maybe before the Wobblies, around the time of the Haymarket martyrs if an article that I have read lately is any indication) of “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Most of those issues have been adequately addressed in one form or another by the writers and/or editors of the documents.

There is one point, however, mentioned here that I would like to highlight a little more based on my own long- time experience with legal defense cases, work, given the dearth of more direct class-struggle issues, that has consumed much more of my political time (and that of others who I have spoken to on the matter) lately than I would have expected. That is the question of “hiding” the relationship between the defense organization and the political organization leading up the case, the question of front groups. Most of these radical legal cases from defense of the Panthers back in the 1960s to the latest death penalty cases start with some leftist organization’s impetus.

Those seeking to center their campaigns on beseeching hard-core liberal support (and some vital cash nexus that goes with seeking such support) will “hide’ their “parent” organizational affiliations and “pretend” the cause is a simple democratic one. The Stalinists of the Communist Party, after their short bout with “third period” purity in the late 1920s were past masters of this technique. The clearest example of this that I can give, and that radicals today might either remember or be somewhat familiar with, was the Angela Davis case in connection with her involvement with the Jonathan Jackson (George Jackson’s brother)/Sam Melville Brigade. Now Angela Davis was then, and now, a hard Stalinist and then a leading public member of the party. One would have thought that her party affiliation would have been front and center since everybody knew it anyway.

And, more importantly, that those Communist Party members working on this important campaign would have identified themselves proudly with their fellow comrade. Well, I guess you cannot teach an old dog new tricks as the worn-out adage goes. At least a Stalinist old dog. One meeting that I went to concerning her defense had about fifty people in attendance. Some liberals, known to me. Some unaffiliated radicals, also known to me. And the rest CPers. Except, if you were not politically savvy you would not have known that last fact because not one CPer, not one identified him or herself as such. Oh sure there were representatives from the Croatian Anti-Fascist League, The League For International Peace, Mothers for Peace and the like. Yes, you guessed it all CPers. And to what end? You see, maybe the liberals could be fooled, or wanted to be, and maybe even a few radicals who believe in some “family of the left” notion of politics, as well. But when the deal goes down the bourgeoisie is not fooled, not by a long shot. And then not only are you defending one comrade but the whole organization. So learn a new trick, okay?

Note:

An additional twist on the CP's catering to the liberals in the Angela Davis case was that they left class-war prisoner Ruchell McGee, Ms. Davis' co-defendant, to basically fend for himself. His profile would not have gone down as well with such elements enamored with celebrity Davis. I also note that forty years later I am still calling for Ruchell McGee's freedom as part of my June Class-War Prisoners series. Enough said.

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-“Campus Spartacist”-(Austin, 1970)

Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online 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 and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist

Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.

—Riazanov Library
******
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.
*********
Markin comment on this issue:

As I have noted on numerous other occasions, including in yesterday’s commentary in this series (see archives, July 4, 2011), I am a proud son of the working class, of the desperate working poor segment of that class to boot. Nevertheless I had written off the working class as a factor in my early political schemes. That is until 1969. And even then, as I noted in an earlier installment of commentaries on this series (see archives, July 3, 2011), I was only “toying” with Marxism in that year. And part of that “toying” was a rather hard-headed approach to the capacities of the American working class (others, like the French and Italian, I was more agnostic on) to make a socialist revolution, and keep it.

Thus one sin that I could never be accused of, and when I did turn to Marxism I was not impressed by, was any variation of the rampart worker-ism that animated much of the left that I was investigating, and as noted in this issue, included Progressive Labor (PL). And the fight against that trend, in the end, is the importance of this polemic against the PL-led Worker-Student Alliance and its off-shoot Campus WSA (CWSA). Clearly, if only seen on my part in retrospect, it was necessary for pro-working class revolutionaries in smaller organizations, like the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus (RMC) and independent radicals, when the turn to the working class began in earnest in 1969, to orient to PL-SDS. Especially when the dust from the decisive battles within SDS against the hostile to the working class (or written off American working class) RYM settled. And as such fight for your own program.

This five-point program presented by the Austin RMC, culminating in the fight for a labor party, was just such a counter-posed program presented by the Austin RMC, culminating in the fight for a labor party, was just such a counter-posed program to attract serious student militants. Particularly when PL lost its moorings and began to cater to what? Liberalism, narrow campus-issue-ism, social worker-ism, and so on. In the next student upsurge, or general working class upsurge, that we have seen just the glimmer of signs of this year with the public workers union struggles we will need just such a program to attract, and keep, serious militants.

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-“Campus Spartacist”-(Bay Area, 1969)

Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online 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 and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist

Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.

—Riazanov Library
******
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.
*****
Markin comment on this issue:

As I have noted on numerous other occasions I am a proud son of the working class, of the desperate working poor segment of that class to boot. Nevertheless I had written off the working class as a factor in my early political schemes. That is until 1969. And even then, as I noted in yesterday’s installment of commentaries on this series (see archives, July 3, 2011), I was only “toying” with Marxism in that year. And part of that “toying” was a rather hard-headed approach to the capacities of the American working class (others, like the French and Italian, I was more agnostic on) to make a socialist revolution, and keep it.

And that is where the proud son of the working poor comes in, the hard-headed part rather than the intellectual grand-scheming. And as my model then I took my own father, my own proud but humbled father,no, beaten down, who could have used communism, desperately used communism to help him understand his hurts, and do something about them. Help a man who had come out of the Kentucky coal fields, fought in World War II, and stayed in the North after his discharge from a local Naval Depot (he was a Marine). The problem is that he had come out those coal fields uneducated, unskilled (Boston labor market- unskilled), with three quick hunger boys’ mouths to feed on a last hired, first fired hell circle.

Hurts he had in triplicate but time, inclination, ability to join the communist cause if for no other reason that to feel good about himself was out of his realm (to speak nothing of the red scare, which scared the hell out of many more well-placed brethren that he). So, as it turned out, it was left to one of his sons to fight his fight in his absence. And that is where the transitional demands raised here, especially that “30 for 40” notion, would have served my father well. Spread the work to all who need it, that’s the ticket. He could have understood that idea, if not all that such a scheme would have demanded for its implementation. Served us well too if we could ever get back to that seemingly old-fashioned notion that labor must rule.

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-“Campus Spartacist”-(Austin, 1969)

Click on the headline to link to the Campus Spartacist archival website for an online 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 and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*********
Campus Spartacist

Campus Spartacus was published as a stand alone newsletter irregularly in localized version of the SL's national collage network, with issues published in Austin, NYC, and the Bay Area from 1965 through 1971. The list below reflects these local versions.

—Riazanov Library
******
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.
********
Markin comment on this issue:

I have noted elsewhere (in the commentaries to the GI Voice archival documents, see archives May 11-18 2011) that I would have given much gold, or at least saved myself some very anxious political wilderness years, if I had run into the writer of this Campus Spartacist polemic in 1969 (or 1970) when I made a dramatic shift left-ward in my political understandings of the world.

Not that I would have adhered to, or even agreed with, what she was saying at the time. Far from it. I had only half-broken form bourgeois society and politics but I was learning, learning fast. I was, frankly, still only “toying around with” Marxist concepts at that time, but I would, as is my wont and had always been my way, made a mental note of who she was, and what political organization she represented. And it was not the CP, SWP, or even PL that even then left me cold.

Although her letter to a friend (a nice touch, a well-honored way to make political points, and a form used by all the revolutionary politicians in the old days when they wanted to ‘talk” serious without evoking their organizational affiliations) is not “high Trotskyism” by any means she has the traditional Stalinist/Maoist analysis down pretty well for someone who probably was fairly new to the world of high Trostkyism. And in the end when you think about it if there could have been fifty or one hundred more like her, not fully formed “Trots” but ardent, a lot of the inner turmoil of the 1969 SDS fight could have been directed toward the main historic (and real) fight in the international working class, Stalinism vs. Trotskyism. A flat-out, no holds barred fight for the heart and soul of those thousands, and maybe tens of thousands, of student and youth radicals who knew the CP, the SWP, and to a lesser extent PL were not the road to revolution. Or, as here, later pretenders like the RU (and the October League).

*The Jackson State Killings, 1970- Never Forget, Never Forgive- Kent State Too

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the Jackson State (Mississippi) killing of two students , and injuring of several others.


Markin comment:

Hey, am I the only one, except Bob Feldman, who has linked the Kent State and Jackson State student killings by the government together today as we mark the fortieth anniversary of those events. It was the same struggle by us and the same rationale by those in power. Remember all students (and others) were put on notice that the American government, federal and local, had you in their cross hairs if you decided to get uppity. Etch that in your brains for future reference.

*The Latest From The Students For A Democratic Society (SDS, 2006 Model) Website

Click on the headline to link to the latest from the "Students For A Democratic Society (SDS, 2006 Model)" Website.

Markin comment:

Looking over the material on this Website is one of the reasons that I recently noted that students today, and I can be corrected on this with some contrary evidence, do not have that grand world view about solving the major problems confronting the planet that we "old gezzers and gezzettes" did back in the days, the 1960s. We made many mistakes back then but avoiding the realities of the necessity of "big picture" solution(s) and that of the special duty to struggle against the "monster" required of those of us who were "living in the belly of the beast" here in America were not among them.

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- Student Struggles Over Budget Cuts- English Version

Click on the headline to link to the latest from the "HistoMat" Blog- Student Struggles Over Budget Cuts- English Version.

*From The "Bob Feldman 68" Blog- The Youth Revolt Of 1964- Mario Savio and The Free Speech Movement At Berkeley

Click on the headline to link to, via the "Bob Feldman 68" blog, a "YouTube" film clip of 1964 Free Speech Movement and Berkeley student leader, Mario Savio.

Markin comment:

In many ways, for white leftists at least, this was their first major confrontation with the imperial state and its agents, and it was not pretty. Unfortunately, many of those who became radicalized back in the day have long ago giving up that ghost. Well, the next political generation that is now coming of age should view this clip to get a better idea of what they will confront in coming to terms with today's issues like education and social welfare budget cuts, war, and more war of all kinds.

*From The Marxist Archives- Leon Trotsky On "Students And Capitalism"

Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, dated February 26, 2010 concerning the relationship between students and capitalist society.

Markin comment:

In light of the recent March 4th "Defend Public Education" national actions led by students, teachers and campus labor organizations it is good to note the relationship between students, the working class and capitalist society. Back in the 1960s we wasted a lot of precious resources, personnel, and, above all, time by being very, very unclear on that relationship. But hell, we are all in the same boat right this minute so this lesson might be easier to learn today.

*Defend the Evergreen State College (Washington ) 6 !

Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

Markin comment:

This information is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. I would note that this is an important student struggle for today at a time when many campuses are very, very quiet. Moreover, the question of suspending leftist student political organizations whatever their political shortcomings is a very serious problems that labor militants must add their voices in protest against. I could not link to the site listed but if you Google the Evergreen 6 Legal Defense Fund you can get information and make a donation.



Defend Activists at Evergreen State College

In "Drop Charges Against Evergreen 6! Reinstate Olympia SDS!" (WVNo. 914, 9 May), we reported that six concertgoers face frame-up charges fol¬lowing the cop riot at a February 14 Dead Prez concert at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Outrageously, as part of this ongoing witchhunt, charges of malicious mischief—a felony—and riot have been filed against three more people, Justin Killing,Kelly Primeaux and Christina Shimizu. The Spartacus Youth Club demands: Drop the charges now! Hands off the concertgoers!

Following the February cop riot, the Olympia branch of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was suspended by the Evergreen State College administration in an act of political censorship. Supporters of SDS have been occupying Evergreen's Seminar I building since May 21, demanding SDS's reinstatement and calling to "build a movement for student power." Cops targeting the protesters have arrested one supporter of SDS, Shyam Khanna, who faces charges of assault and riot for allegedly spitting on a cop at the Olympia May Day demonstration. Six others also face charges following the May Day protest. We say: Drop the charges now! The SYC protests SDS's suspension and defends those occupying the building against any reprisals from the administration or police. At the same time, as revolutionary Marxists, we understand that students do not have the power to fundamentally change society. We seek to win the best radical students over to the side of the working class, which uniquely has both the social power and the objective interest to overthrow the capitalist system and organize society according to human need.

Donations to Evergreen 6 Legal Defense should be made through their PayPal account, accessible from the Evergreen 6 Legal Defense Web site at evergreen6.xlOhosting.com. The address advertised in our last article is no longer in use.