Re: what the masses do

At 11:51 AM 8/1/01 -0700, Richard N Hutchinson wrote:
>I don't think this points to any of the organized groups' strategies as
>being the correct one.  It simply points to the fact that "the masses" 
>(including those shot down at Jackson and Kent State, for instance) had
>their own views of the situation that did not correspond to the views of
>any of the "politicos."

I'd say as a rule of thumb that the Trotskyist-dominated Student
Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam was swimming against the
stream in the 1960s and early 70s. While the rest of the student movement
was acting out fantasies about being some kind of Vietcong within the
American borders, SMC activists were trained--and I use the word
advisedly--to avoid what were called "confrontations" at the time. Looking
back in retrospect, nearly every outburst against the war was useful but it
was only the boring and respectable mass demonstrations that encouraged
GI's to turn against the war.

This was something I posted to the Marxism list yesterday that gets to the
heart of some of these questions in reply to Joćo Paulo Monteiro, a
Portuguese subscriber and critical supporter of the black bloc.

====

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 21:02:03 +0100, Joćo Paulo Monteiro wrote:
>Could it be that you're getting old, Lou?

Actually I am no different than I was at 21 years old when I hooked 
up with the Trotskyist movement.

Let me amplify on this since it gets to the heart not only of my 
political beliefs but how I have led my life. Part one is a reply I 
offered today on the alt.politics.socialism.trotsky newsgroup to a 
former member of the Healyite organization. Part two is an expansion 
of the story found in part one.

Part one

"Stephen R. Diamond" <stephend15@mindspring.com> wrote: 
"But, let me ask you this: what is the mechanism by which protests, 
even mass protests, contribute to radicalization? This is more an 
honest question than you probably will realize."

It depends on what you mean by radicalization. I was not radicalized 
by demonstrating against the war. Instead it encouraged me to believe 
that I was not alone in opposing the war. My first demonstration was 
in NYC in 1966, which brought out more than 40,000 people. It was the 
inaugurating event of the 5th Avenue Peace Parade Committee, a 
coalition of the SWP, the CP and pacifists.

Prior to this demo I was utterly convinced that I was the only person 
in NYC opposed to the war. I was a philosophy student at the New 
School Graduate Faculty and had never really given much thought to 
politics. I identified with Camus, Nietzsche, etc.

Leading up to the demonstration, I noticed posters and stickers 
showing up all over the place. On the subways and on lampposts. 
Little did I suspect that these notices would touch a nerve in so 
many people.

After the demonstration, I began talking politics more and more with 
classmates including a guy named Arthur Maglin, who was in the SWP. 
He seemed to have many answers but I found him totally inflexible. 
Why couldn't electing better Democrats end the war? I wouldn't admit 
it to him but I sort of knew the answer to this myself. I had voted 
for LBJ, like a shmuck. Look what it got me. As much as I found 
myself annoyed with Maglin, I kept talking to him.

Finally about a year later, I went to work in Harlem as a welfare 
investigator and discovered real poverty for the first time in my 
life. I was completely shocked. Then, 5 months into the job, Detroit 
exploded.

Everything Maglin had been telling me now started to make sense. I 
asked him about classes on socialism and he was happy to oblige. So 
while this does not really answer your question about the effect of 
mass demonstrations, it does point in the direction of a *process*.

All I can tell you is this. If the SDS demonstration in Washington 
the previous year had the character of the Genoa protest, I never 
would have left my apartment to demonstrate in NYC.

Part 2

If there was anything I was not interested in at this point, it was 
the "new left" SDS'ers who appeared to be nothing but pipe-smoking 
sociology grad students at the New School. Sitting around the 
cafeteria holding endless bull sessions about "elites" and 
"domination," the last thing on their mind seemed to be concrete 
activity against the war in Vietnam. As the rough equivalent of the 
"autonomists" of their day, I suppose that their reliance on C. 
Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse was a step up from Hardt and Negri. 
Years later I discovered that many, if not all of them, were "red 
diaper babies" who were educated in "progressive" values by their CP 
parents, but were hostile to the notion of revolution, "democratic 
centralism", the working class as agent of change or any of the stuff 
they heard around the breakfast table growing up.

As I was looking for was the most serious, disciplined and focused 
revolutionary organization around, the SWP seemed to fit the bill. 
However, like most radicals, I was not above doing a little "shopping 
around". Victor Marrow, another classmate at the New School who was 
also my room-mate for a time at Bard College, was a contact of the 
Maoist Progressive Labor Party, which was considered much more 
fire-breathing than the SWP. One of their African-American leaders, 
Bill Epton, had been arrested for fomenting a riot in 
Harlem--something that was a real plus in my eyes.

So while taking introduction to socialism classes with the Trotskyist 
SWP on one evening, I'd take the same kind of class with the Maoists 
on another. Jake Rosen, the PLP class leader, was highly touted by 
Victor, since he was a carpenter. The image of a Maoist hardhat was 
certainly appealing, but--alas--the reality was anything but. Jake, 
who sat cross-legged on his sofa in his bare feet, while picking at 
his toes, had little else to say except that "society was divided 
into classes" and that "only the working class had the power to 
change society". Not I was getting the same thing from the SWP in a 
more sophisticated version, they were obviously much more deeply 
involved with the Vietnam antiwar movement. Furthermore, they weren't 
into the cult of Stalin as the PLP was. Mao was okay with me-Stalin 
definitely not.

When I came into join the SWP, they introduced me to Eddie Shaw, the 
branch organizer in NYC. Eddie was not only about the same age as my 
father, but dressed identically when he was in his weekend "good 
clothes". This meant a blousy short-sleeved white shirt with vents in 
the sleeves and gray gabardine pants. The big difference between him 
and my old man was the large tattoo on his bicep, which Jews were 
prevented from wearing for liturgical reasons (you had to leave the 
world the same way you came in, or else you couldn't get buried in a 
Jewish cemetery. I never heard of anybody actually being banned in 
this fashion.)

At this meeting I learned a little bit about Eddie. He was in the 
merchant marines during WWII, where he was recruited by the 
Trotskyist movement, and also when he got the tattoo. During the 
early 1960s he became the national chair of the Fair Play for Cuba 
Committee and a highly visible "subversive" in FBI terms. The day 
that JFK got shot, Eddie returned home to discover his apartment 
building surrounded by NYC police cars. They were looking for him. 
This was no accident since one of the most famous pictures of Lee 
Harvey Oswald shows him with a rifle in one hand and a copy of the 
Militant, the SWP newspaper, in the other.

Another high-profile Trotskyist from Eddie's generation could also be 
seen in the headquarters all the time. He was high-profile in more 
ways than one. At 6'5" tall and 350 pounds, Fred Halstead could not 
be missed even in a crowd. Now in charge of the party's antiwar work, 
he was a garment cutter during most of the 1960s. During the 1950s, 
when he was on a black list, he worked for a time as a bouncer in 
"redneck" bars in Los Angeles.

Fred was a sailor in WWII who became involved in a mass movement that 
was key to the party's understanding of the strategic goal of the 
antiwar movement. Stationed with tens of thousands of other GI's in 
the Pacific arena, Fred discovered that they were not being shipped 
home after Japan surrendered. The word went out that they were going 
to be redeployed against the Chinese revolution. When word of this 
spread out, radicals in the military ranks organized a huge "Bring Us 
Home" movement that ultimately forced the US to pull back. One of the 
key organizers was Ernie Mazey, a UAW sitdown strike veteran, who 
Fred mentions in his pamphlet on the movement. What he does not 
mention unfortunately is that Ernie was a central leader of the 
Cochranite opposition.

Although the "Bring Us Home" movement was never widely discussed in 
the party press, there is little doubt that everything it did was 
calculated to replicate something like this in the Vietnam war. In 
plain English, their goal was to foment a troop revolt. In order to 
accomplish this, the peace demonstrations had to be very 
"respectable" or else the GI's would have never considered joining 
the movement. While the GI's might be won over in the process-and 
they were-the pipe-smoking sociology majors in SDS at the New School 
would not be. That was fine with me.

Although Fred Halstead is long dead and the SWP no longer resembles 
the organization I joined--even if you squint--I still retain the 
vision of what they were trying to do. For me the purpose of a 
revolutionary movement is not to galvanize the already radicalized 
into some kind of "affinity group" in black masks or white coveralls, 
it is to reach the masses who have the power not only to end a war 
but change society. While this work can be frustrating at times, it 
is the only one that can have a real pay-off in the end. 

Louis Proyect
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