“Vietnamese Dissidents: Absent from the Western Mind” Dustin Roasa. Dissent, Volume 57, Number 3, Summer 2010, pp. 16-21 (Article) DOI: 10.1353/dss.0.0153

http://www.dustinroasa.com/PDFs/Dissent-VietnameseDissidents.pdf

You wrote “Maurice’s book poses the question of why Mike stayed with all those right-wing anti-Communist New York needle-trades union losers — almost through 1973. That’s the tragedy of Mike’s life, that he didn’t leave the ossifying old SP with Bogdan Denitch and Debbie Meier in 1965, and didn’t come out earlier against the Vietnam War and for unilateral withdrawal.”

I want to address your question about Michael’s 1972 resignation as Chair of the SP and his 1973 resignation from SDUSA.

(a) The Chairperson of the SP, when it voted 2-1 to change its name to Social Democrats, USA, was Bayard Rustin. Michael’s son, Alec, told me that he never heard a single word against Rustin by Michael his whole life. Wouldn’t Rustin’s presence be sufficient reason for Michael to maintain ties?

(Recent issues of The Activist note that a YDS chapter organized a community center named in honor of Rustin, and a discussant of the review of Marable’s biography of Malcom X notes the tradition of A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin: Such spontaneous recognitions of Rustin’s contributions to social-democratic politics hearten me.)

(b) You treat the decision to call for an immediate cease-fire and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops as the obvious solution, rather than a tragic choice. To his credit, Michael always acknowledged the killings and terror following the withdrawing U.S. troops.
-Is it so hard to understand Michael’s 1868-1971 support for a negotiated peace treaty (and an end to bombings), which is what the SP/SDUSA approved in 1972?
The same issues bedevil us in Aghanistan: We want an end to the war, but we don’t want to read about a ban on schools and soccer for girls in Marie Claire, again. Where is the easy choice?

I saw today on YouTube an interview with Swedish actress Liv Ullman, who worked with Bayard Rustin to assist refugees from IndoChina: It’s clear that the people in SDUSA continued to care and try to help refugees after the U.S. pulled out.

I will mention that the new collection of Irving Howe’s interviews contains a discussion of his with Todd Gitlin, in which Gitlin acknowledges that Kahn “to his eternal credit” was right about many issues in SDS. In that interview, Howe makes sharp comments comparing Harrington and Kahn, mentioning that Harrington’s fuzziness irritated Kahn and that Kahn was very intelligent but also very tough and confrontational; Howe mentions Rachelle Horowitz as a kinder, gentler person than Kahn.
-If Irving Howe, who originally pushed Michael Harrington to break with the SP majority and call for an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, volunteered a good word on behalf of the SDUSA leaders, can’t you all try to be just towards them?

Indeed, I think it would be good for the YDS to invite Rachelle Horowitz to next Winter’s conference for the “generations of socialism” plenary. She appears in the “Brother Outsider” documentary about Bayard Rustin, which you all should rent and show at a local YDS/DSA meeting!

Reclaiming the SP/SDUSA heritage would be good for DSA/YDS: Apparently SDUSA collapsed with the death of Penn Kemble, so there are members to pay dues, if you just recruit them! Similarly, it seems that the “Socialist Party USA” has been taken over by Trotskyssant jerks, who are expelliing state chapters left and write. You could probably try to pick up some members on your left, also.

In solidarity,
Jim
James E. Blevins

P.S. Joe, your phrasing troubles me.
(a) You are not anti-Semitic, of course, so I don’t understand why you note “New York needle-trades union” Would you explain?

(b) Why “anti-Communist”. DSA has always in principle been opposed to communism, and has sometimes abstained from joining some events/coalitions because of the necessity of distinguishing itself from communists. (Similarly, the Swedish Social Democrats used to fund a project to help anti-communists in Cuba, partly to distinguish themselves from the pro-Castro communist/left party; compare the AFL-CIO and NED support of Solidarity in Poland) Why is “anti-communist” a bad thing?

That link I posted to was actually by Postone (well worth reading). Cutrone’s (who I do agree with more than I disagree with) personal website just happens to host a very good collection of essays.

The thing is far-left insanity is actually the norm in the international Left. So even though I recognize that engaging with the mainstream is more important, I can’t help but ignore self-described radicals especially when they proclaim themselves to be “Marxists” and go around calling me a “social democrat” (at best) or more commonly a “neocon”.

The “strategy of patience” and the push towards non-reformist reform by good democratic socialists is an antidote to this.

***

I’ve recently read this from Postone, who is pretty close to me on the War on Terror and on the transition from Fordism.

http://platypus1917.home.comcast.net/~platypus1917/postonemoishe_historyhelplessness.pdf

I recommend it, but assuming you subscribe to most of his views, think about the role of ANSWER — shouldn’t the Left have come out harder on some of its slogans and political alignment? Shouldn’t there have been a post-9/11 dilemma for the Left? Instead there was a rationalization of far-right political violence and a knee-jerk “anti-imperialism.”

Among the far left in the United States I don’t think the problem is that complete sectarianism prevents us from trying to work together or join progressive movements; in my experience I’ve been to SDS (“anarchist”), PSL (staliniod), and ISO (“trotskyist”) joint actions.

I wouldn’t mind more critical engagement in the left — NOT about lines or vague theoretical questions — but about pertinent, modern ones. There is definitely a fine line somewhere and I reserve the right to come to the same conclusions as Adrian over the course of the next few years.

[edit: an autocorrection on my web browser wildly changed the meaning of two words to something incomprehensible]

**** I’m actually like 90 percent sure I got this idea from Luckacs’ “History and Class Consciousness”, though similar thoughts were definitely in “The Prophet Outcast”.

At the time, I was very interested in the sectoloy and inter-sectarian squabbles of American Marxism (God knows why) and it seemed to me that Harrington had, in the later part of his career, found a narrow path around the rightward-drifting, hawkish Shachtmanites and between Stalinism of the CP and the sectarian madness of the Trostkyist parties.

The final six years of the Bush administration, the Cylon-Human Alliance and a number of other developments since my introduction to Michael Harrington have reshaped my political sensibilities.

These days, I believe that kindness, humility and empathy are the only real antidotes to sectarianism and Stalinism within the organized left. That’s not to say that theory doesn’t matter. Harrington’s point that capitalism itself is a bureaucratic collectivizing system, for example, is pretty key to understanding the world.

However, I do think that soundly reasoned Marxist formulas, correct lines on “Russian questions,” etc., really do not amount to a pile of beans when espoused by an arrogant or megalomaniacal person. There are plenty of old Jewish Communists who are wonderful, big-hearted people despite having CP cooties, and there are plenty of hip young anarchists who are sectarian bullies.

Harrington’s point is not much different than Erik Olin Wright’s — when we think about class, we have to think about not just whether one owns capital or not, but whether one has some autonomy over one’s work or not (being both bossed and bossing others is very different from just being bossed), and what type of skill does one have (a skilled computer software designer at Microsoft is a rather different member of the working class than is an undocumented worker in the unorganized service sector).

Yes, in some sense, all college profs are ‘workers,’ but tenured profs have different levels of autonomy and (somewhat) job security than adjuncts, to say the least. As a tenured prof who struggles to get other tenure (and tenure-track) unionized profs (I teach at a public u.) to agitate for the right of adjuncts to unionized (our TAs are) and improve their conditions, let me tell you that the “labor aristocracy” of profs need to be subjectively convinced to support the collective interest of their class. (They don’t even realize that the very future of any tenured faculty depends upon ending the exploitation of adjuncts and grad students!).

In any event, class consciousness and class unity can be built…but it won’t be totally unified and it will be ever-shifting. And you can’t essentialize any sector of the working class being more progressive than another. And the left will always be a coalition of workers of brain and of hand who are culturally quite distinct and often in tension. The Western left would be very weak if you took away public sector workers, teachers, social workers, journalists, etc. And highly educated, relatively well-remunerated workers of the brain tend to vote left more consistently than religious or culturally conservative blue collar workers. That is, class is crucial to the left, but it ain’t simple and the left is a coalition of radical democratic forces, many of whom are not in unions and don’t think of themselves as classically “working class.”

When Joe gets back in town he might be able to give us more insight into what Harrington meant.

(It might be a bit unreasonable to ask this considering that the speech was made almost a quarter-century ago).