by LOUIS PROYECT
You know those double-takes that Stan Laurel used to pull off when, for example, he saw Oliver Hardy walking through the front door with a black eye his wife had just given him? That’s the expression I wore after turning to the Sunday NY Times Review section and saw Corey Robin’s article “The New Socialists” splashed across the front page.
The ability of the Jacobin/DSA steamroller to garner such attention, starting with a January 20, 2013 Times article about Bhaskar Sunkara titled “A Young Publisher Takes Marx Into the Mainstream”, boggles the mind. Once upon a time, as fairy tales begin, the group I belonged to nearly got spotlighted in the Sunday Times Magazine section. The magazine had commissioned Walter and Miriam Schneir, who were best known for their book on the Rosenbergs trial, to write such a piece when the SWP was making huge gains on the left as a result of our work in the antiwar movement. When the Scheirs turned it in, the Times nixed it because it was too complimentary. It is one thing to publish puff pieces about Jacobin; it was another to publish one for a group on J. Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro hit-list. Maybe when Jacobin’s offices get burglarized under mysterious circumstances, I’ll take them more seriously.
The Schneir’s article appeared in the September 25, 1976 Nation, just two years before the party embarked on the “turn toward the working class” that would lead to 90 percent of the membership either being expelled or resigning. Just rereading it for the first time in 20 years or so, it strikes me that this is the kind of article that needs to be written about the DSA. The Schneirs were not interested in promoting the SWP, only reporting on it as this excerpt would indicate. (The Seigle alluded to in the excerpt was Larry Seigle, an obnoxious full-timer who within a year after denouncing the FSLN as traitors dropped out of the SWP and returned to private life.)
Seigle and others who joined the Socialist Workers in the 1960s believed that the past contained lessons that they could absorb and apply. They regarded the actions of many SDSers, Yippies, pacifists, Black Panthers and other radicals as pragmatic and impulsive. They themselves followed well-trodden paths. To influence large numbers of people they used their time-tested tactic, the united front, whereby members join various mass organizations whose limited objectives they share. Those unfriendly to the tactic call it “infiltrating.” A variation is the creation of a single-issue organization by a coalition of otherwise politically diverse groups. During the anti-war movement, the united front coalition was a resounding success in helping to mobilize millions of demonstrators but it also engendered political hostilities on the Left that persist to this day.
The Schneirs were absolutely correct. (Contact me at lnp3@panix.com for a copy of the article.)
Robin’s article, titled “The New Socialists”, begins by trying to explain the surge of interest in Sanders, Jacobin, Chapo Frat House, A. O-C, DSA, et al by pointing to the betrayal of liberals. With candidates like Hillary Clinton, no wonder young people prefer those politicians who describe themselves as socialist. Robin writes:
Since the 1970s, American liberals have taken a right turn on the economy. They used to champion workers and unions, high taxes, redistribution, regulation and public services. Now they lionize billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, deregulate wherever possible, steer clear of unions except at election time and at least until recently, fight over how much to cut most people’s taxes.
I hate to sound petty and vindictive but wasn’t A. O-C aware of Ted Kennedy’s role in deregulation when she interned for him a decade ago? He was the prime mover in deregulating the railroads, airlines, and trucking during the Carter presidency. And when Bill Clinton was president, Ted Kennedy voted to repeal Glass-Steagall as well. Maybe this didn’t matter to her at the time if she was trying to get her foot in the door politically. It does look good on a resume, I have to admit.
Louis Proyect for more