"New" vs. "Left" in the SDS

...The enemy was not "corporate liberalism," which is a euphemism, but "fascism...

...Progressive Labor is not interested in SDS except as an arena of potential recruits...

...There, the sole motivation for centralization was that the "revolutionary situation in America" demanded a "revolutionary vanguard" organization...

...At last the convention had something real to discuss...

...PL, burdened with its surreal commitment to "the red, red sun of the East," its glorification of Stalin, and its willingness to fight the war in Vietnam to the last Vietnamese, could only flourish in the hermetic environment such as the New Left provides...

...These young people are a demoralized collection of acid-heads and sociopaths with a flair for surpassing in their personal and "political" conduct every gutter-level smear hurled at the Left by reactionaries...

...Except for a few snide remarks about "external cadre" operating in SDS, no one had dared to bring this matter out in open debate in the history of SDS...

...It consists of the ritualistic repetition of certain catchphrases like `organize people to take control of the conditions that determine their lives," "structure radical life-styles outside the system," "constituency-based organization leading to regional program exposing the corporate interrelationships among the processing apparatus of the establishment," etc...

...These events have hit SDS where it lives—on the campuses...

...Something very profound and basic is occuring within the upper-middle-class strata from which SDS recruits, and it must be said that the National Office faction's brand of radicalism more accurately reflects this mood than does PL...

...When they broke into the developing controversy on race and radicalism, by means of Algerian war-cries and unbelievable profanity, they effectively terminated intelligent discussion and nearly provoked a physical struggle...

...One speaker dealt with `racism in the Left" and cited Harold Cruse, the Negro intellectual who believes that Jewish Communists are re NOTEBOOK sponsible for - the emasculation of black manhood in America...

...Their aim in centralizing SDS by means of the "Program Proposals" was, pure and simple, to purge PL and consolidate their power as the only organized faction in SDS...

...It is at this point that the SDS elite, capitalizing on the exhaustion of the delegates, tries to pass whatever is the object of the discussion...

...Interspersed among these relatively noncontroversial (in the New Left) topics were a few—"Progressive Labor party and the SDS"—that foretold of the important issues to be debated at the conven' tion, but the substantive issues everybody knew to be at stake were at most only obliquely reflected in the workshops...

...The "Program Proposals" document was a product of the "National Office" grouping within SDS...

...This pessimistic conclusion was joyously affirmed by the Motherfuckers' speaker, who carried the logic one step further...

...The speaker gave a lively description of the difficulties involved in raising the workers from economic conscious ness to class consciousness, and he dwelt at length on the phenomenon of racist, white, skilled workers and their vested interest in hold ing down black unskilled labor, even within the same union...

...This shrewd move took the supporters of the document by surprise...

...This speaker was (to me) the surprise of the evening...

...NOTEBOOK In order to portray themselves as authentic heirs to the SDS tradition, the National Office faction must mount an effective critique of PL's Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism, and forward an alternative radical ideology...

...The National Office faction, on the other hand, with its half-baked melange of Marcuse, Sorel, Bakunin, Calvin, and Guevara, pridefully sees itself as the revolutionary vehi cle, and consequently feels a responsibility for the consequences of its actions to no one and nothing but History...

...This discussion was different, however...

...he took up this implied challenge to PL's working-class orientation by noting that "fascism" was not restricted to the working class—there is such a thing as middleclass student fascism, as exemplified by certain features of the recent San Francisco State College fracas...

...Nothing has done more damage to SDS than the McCarthy campaign and the opening of peace negotiations...

...The debate that followed, on the role of the working class in contemporary capitalist society, enabled PL and its supporters to claim the events in France as its model...

...The convention proper was preceded by three days of workshops on such staples of "the movement" as "GI Organizing," "Marcuse and (Norman 0.) Brown," "White Racism," "Movement Media, including Underground Papers, Radio Free People, etc.," and so on...

...The debate on the "Program Proposals" document went on and produced its corresponding behavioral reaction: a rise in the anxiety level of the convention...

...Large numbers of delegates who had come to the convention uncommitted rose to announce that they "couldn't buy this Marcuse crap about the workers...

...The second was an entertaining ac count of a young radical's life with proletarians in a farm-implement factory...

...The audience divides into two factions upon receipt of the message: those who lack self-confidence because of newness to SDS and who hide their failure to comprehend what is being said by mimicking the responses of those around them, occasionally even taking the floor to try stringing together a few phrases on their own—and those who do not hide their inability to comprehend, but who restrict themselves to muttering "bullshit...

...The third speaker was a Progressive Labor party SDS'er...

...PL seems gradually to be moving toward the Right, away from its earlier Third Period Communism...

...Because PL stresses the interests of the working class, it regards university seizures and Black nationalism, which are dear to the hearts of the National Office faction, as irresponsible and (in private) semifascist adventures that can only provoke a rightist reaction and alienate the working class from radicalism...

...When the war begins, "the color of your skin will be your uniform, and if you're carrying food to the guerrillas, well, I hope they get it when you drop it...

...All thought of "non-exclusion," once a cardinal principle of SDS doctrine, was forgotten...

...Wednesday evening was taken up by a plenary session devoted to a panel and discussion on the "black liberation strug gle...

...But you can't intimidate a disciplined cadre like PL with a chant, no matter how intimidating it sounds, and when it became apparent that the convention wasn't going to stampede, the demonstration petered out...

...Old-timers" who held out so much hope for the SDS in the early sixties will soon discover, if they have not already done so, that very little is left of that unique spirit of innocent idealism which then characterized the group...

...The rest of the evening was taken up with speeches...

...Only one thing seemed clear to both sides: SDS is full of "objective" racists...

...Convention observers began edging toward the exits, but the conflict was resolved short of violence —after all, these are college students—by allowing a Motherfucker to present his views on the subject of racism after the panel had concluded...

...The National Office faction was gambling that it could stampede the convention...

...And in fact, it is...

...These phrases are woven together and declaimed in the most passionate style...

...As the National Office speakers worked on the convention, seeking to build up resentment against PL to a fever pitch, PL, anticipating a siege, sat tight and confined themselves to hisses and an occasional charge of "red-baiting...

...But their effort to lynch PL, coming on the heels of a weak performance in the debate on the role of the working class, was such a radical departure from SDS tradition (which, while not democratic, was at least not totalitarian) that it backfired and produced only stunned disbelief among the swing delegates...

...Although split wide open, it is quite conceivable that it will continue to grow, since no other organization exists to absorb New Left youth...

...About two-fifths of the delegates rose and began chanting "PL must go," stamping their feet and clapping their hands, and the din grew deafening...

...If SDS does disintegrate or become moribund, we still may expect further outbursts of middleclass radicalism, expressed through different channels...

...The chant lasted five minutes, but it seemed endless...

...Correspondingly, the recent events at Columbia University, for which the National Office faction takes credit, declined in importance...

...they refrain from popping the bubble because to do so usually provokes an enraged counterattack by the non-ideologues on "Old Leftism" in the SDS...

...The immediate past was characterized as one in which SDS had evolved an "anticapitalist" perspective...

...Progressive Labor conducted itself with great polemical skill and actually won a clear majority of the convention—both in opposition to the Program Proposals document and to a big piece of its ideology...

...PL's "labor line" was constantly cited as a major conservative influence in the organization...

...These latter are the ideologues...

...A PL spokesman rose to comment that it was such views which were themselves "racist...

...Nothing could be farther from the truth...

...Its commitment to the working class, even though for the most part cerebral, forces a minimal concept of responsibility for the consequences of action to take hold...

...The final speaker concluded with the scream "PL must got" and this signalled his supporters to begin a floor demonstration...

...Such "support" is itself racist...

...PL sat tight...

...A Progressive Labor speaker rose to denounce a section of the document which reflected the influence of Herbert Marcuse's ideas on the revolutionary bankruptcy of the proletariat in modem capitalist society...

...AFTER THIS remarkable event, all was anticlimactic...

...The pretense that important things are being hashed out becomes more difficult to maintain after the discussion has droned on for several hours without any apparent resolution...

...Imagine that a chastised Maoist...

...He concluded by saying that the principal contradiction in American society is not class, but race...

...As the scene approached its climax, they were literally snarling...

...Also, during the first two hours the debate on the proposition was conducted in SDS-speak, which is difficult to describe to anyone who has never heard it...

...So when PL attacked the document, not for its ostensible purpose, centralization, nor for its real purpose, to purge SDS, but for its Marcuse-ish contempt of the working class, the National Office faction was caught flat-footed...

...It was absurd, he said, for white radicals to discuss ways of "supporting the Black Liberation struggle...

...What would have happened if the National Office faction had managed to isolate PL, I shudder to imagine...

...The fact is, however, that PL only ran one candidate for national office, and he lost not so much because he lacked support as because of a poorly organized voting system...

...By their own admission, they are capable of doing neither "at this time...

...Progressive Labor's achievements at the SDS Convention should be taken as a measure of the current state of the SDS, rather than as an indication of political superiority...

...The seizure of power in one of the most important links in the structure of establishment power" (Columbia University) didn't look so impressive when contrasted to the proletarian seizure of the means of production in France...

...The level of political sophistication within SDS has been severely debased by romanticism and anti-antiCommunism, and virtually any well-organized and ideologically coherent political tendency could have triumphed...

...It was written in a clotted organizational mandarin, and I could not clearly discern these features...

...The longer the debate continued, the more PL's prestige grew...

...With only about two-fifths of the delegates, they needed support from the SDS center...

...NOTEBOOK Because PL placed none of its cadre in the SDS national office, the National Office faction and its supporters in the radical and liberal press have claimed the victory...

...Following that, the "Program Proposals" document was taken up by the convention...

...On the other hand, events can kill movements...

...Hoping to rescue something of its position, the National Office faction made a hasty decision to bring its politics out into the open,-A spokesman for the "Program Proposals" document stated that he was sorry that the debate, had confused people about the meaning of his document, but that since Progressive Labor had seen fit to utilize its elite cadre to distort and smear, there was nothing honest participatory democrats could do to stop them...

...The blatant rightist repression, which everyone in SDS regards as coming, should be welcomed, even stimulated: the true beastiality that is America will, when no longer obscured, provoke a universal confrontation...

...He went on to describe the counterproductive consequences of the San Francisco State incident, and sounded quite chastised by the whole affair...

...THE STUDENTS for a Democratic Society held its annual convention June 9-15 at Michigan State University, and delegates witnessed some dramatic new developments without precedent in the history of the organization...

...PL has tried to exert a restraining influence on SDS, and was generally regarded as the "Right Wing" of the SDS at the convention...

...Thus trapped into defending an anti-workingclass perspective in the midst of the French events, the National Office faction was smashed in debate...

...THE FORMAL SESSION began with outgoing national officers' reports...

...The important question is whether the current wave of middle-class radicalism can survive the cumulative effect of these events, or whether it will dissolve back into the suburbias which hatched it...

...By the time things actually got underway, tensions were acute...

...He had just finished criticizing the Kerner report for its wholesale indictment of "white society and white racism" as being responsible for Negro oppression—when this potentially fruitful controversy was interrupted by a floor demonstration...

...The first was a rather mundane exhortation to the delegates to support the Peace and Freedom party on the basis of that party's work with the Black Panther Party for SelfDefense...

...Four persons (SDS requested that no one be quoted by name in the press) delivered talks on the subject...

...I have never witnessed comparable behavior in some years of activity in youth politics...

...This generated an atmosphere of frustration and irritability that dominated the rest of the proceedings...

...Some myths have arisen among well-wishers of SDS in the adult liberal community, and they ought to be dispelled...

...The "anarchist" contingent at the convention, consisting primarily of members of the "Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker" chapter of SDS, of the Lower East Side, New York, continually disrupted the convention proceedings with planned "spontaneous" demonstrations, perhaps a case of chickens coming home to roost...

...They knew the politics of desperation when they saw it...

...This document was explained to me as proposing the reorganizing of SDS along centralist lines, and the transformation of the membership into a vanguardist, disciplined cadre...

...The outcome of the French "revolution"—Gaullist victory on an unprecedented scale—will hit SDS also...

...This faction is a conglomeration that claims to represent the true spirit of New Leftism against the depredations of PL and other "external cadre...

...Nothing was said of this in the document, however...

...This news produced an audible gasp among the delegates...

...As a result, Progressive Labor was the clear victor at the 1968 SDS convention...

...The rottenness in America was gradually revealing itself to be the rottenness of America—not atypical, but essential...

...Passions grew quite heated as the delegates polarized between the ideologues of all persuasions who wanted to carry on the discussion, and the nihilists of no persuasions who feel automatically excluded whenever rational debate threatens to break out...

...One is that SDS's recent conduct is due to the machinations of Progressive Labor, which is viewed as a tiny but incredibly effective band of ultra-leftist Maoist maniacs...

...But the atmosphere of the convention was no longer conducive to a joining of the issues...

...Progressive Labor rode out the storm in a manner that did credit to their discipline and strategic abilities...

...They succeeded, not because they are totalitarians (although they are), but because their opposition was even more totalitarian...

...The fact is that the original spirit of "participatory democracy" has all but disappeared from the organization, and the National Office grouping, as will be made clear, waged its fight against PL in an obscurantist and manipulative fashion...

...Where SDS will go in the future is difficult to predict, because its conventions are not very representative of the SDS membership...

...This spokesman was followed by speaker after speaker from the National Office faction, each denouncing Progressive Labor more vituperatively than the last...

...SDS has come the full circle from other-worldliness to under-worldliness...

...The National Office faction, which claims to represent the authentic SDS and New Left spirit, at all times attacked PL from the Left...

...In the meantime, what can only be described as a lynch spirit was building up among the delegates who supported the National Office faction...

...Least of all is it interested in taking responsibility for such SDS activities as the San Francisco State and Columbia University putsches...