Communism and the New Left WHAT THEY'RE UP TO NOW BOOKS by U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT A division of U.S.News & World Report, Inc. WASHINGTON, D.C. 1969 Contents List of Illustrations 7 Introduction 11 I The American Left: Old and New 13 II How They Exploit War 41 III How They Exploit Blacks 65 IV How They Exploit Disorder 79 v Guerrilla Tactics 95 VI Target: Youth 111 VII Target: Labor 129 VIII Spying for Russia 143 IX The Left and the Law 159 X Marxism: Food for the New Left 173 XI The Outlook for the Left 183 Appendix 197 Index 215 7 List of Illustrations Allen Young, Bernardine Dohrn, and Michael Klonsky with newsmen 17 Communist Party candidates in the 1968 presidential election 20 W. E. B. DuBois 22 W. E. B. DuBois Clubs 22 Bettina Aptheker addresses a rally 30 A. J. Muste, Herbert Aptheker, Tom Hayden, and Staughton Lynd at rally 30 Stokely Carmichael 33 Eldridge Cleaver 33 Members of Cornell University's Afro-American Society 35 SDS national headquarters 38 Bettina Aptheker 42 Student-police confrontation at Madison, Wisconsin 45 Draft card burning 46 David Dellinger -1:9 March from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon 51 New Left provoking Pentagon troops 52 Jerry Rubin pursuing tactic of ridicule 55 Eruption of violence at the Democratic National Convention 56 Yippie contributing to tumult of Democratic National Convention 57 Antiwar protesters are dispersed by police 59 "Counterinaugural" parade in Washington 60 Sit-in at Marquette University 62 Antiwar protest at Oberlin College 62 Communist Party-U.S.A. national convention 67 Claude Lightfoot 71 Stokely Carmichael with Troung Chinh in Hanoi 73 Maxwell Stanford 74 Eldridge Cleaver at news conference in Algiers 76 Robert F. Williams arriving in Detroit 77 Rioting in Harlem following King's assassination 81 William Epton leading antipolice parade in Harlem 81 Cover of pamphlet, "We Want Black Power" 84 Gutted buildings in Cleveland riot 87 Fires in Washington, D.C., during 1968 riots 88 Black Power conference in Newark 92 Bomb damage to New York Army induction center 101 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale 104 Larry Clayton Powell before Senate investigation subcommittee 105 Fire bomb displayed by New York City fire marshal 107 Fred Ahmed Evans after murder conviction in Cleveland 108 SDS occupying University of Connecticut administration building ll4 Mark Rudd addressing freshmen at Columbia ll6 ROTC protest at Tulane University ll9 Antidraft demonstrators in fountain during "peace demonstration" 121 Herbert Aptheker addressing students at University of Wisconsin 123 Student strike at Harvard University 125 Peace demonstrator playing in San Francisco Civic Center fountain 126 Members of the "Future Generation" 127 Student-worker uprising in Paris 131 New Leftists supporting strikers at Mahwah, New Jersey 136 SDS national convention 139 Labor leaders Harry Bridges, Michael Quill, and Joseph Curran 141 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg 145 Spies Harry Gold and Roy A. Rhodes, and double agent John Huminik, Jr. 149 Spies Rudolph Abel, Leonid Pivnev, and Klaus Fuchs 157 Jerry Rubin and others at Chicago conspiracy trial 163 Bomb damage at Bluefield State College 165 A. J. Muste and companions with Ho Chi Minh 167 Two of the Catonsville Nine burning draft records 169 Rennie Davis during testimony before Senate investigation committee 171 Karl Marx 177 Friedrich Engels 177 Herbert Marcuse 180 Harlem, always a potential trouble-spot 185 Black Panthers halted at Washington state capitol 186 Black Panthers invade California assembly chamber 186 Police battle students at University of Connecticut 191 Black Panther protest outside court building 194 11 Introduction There is considerable confusion in the United States about the different groups which make up the far left, old and new. This is due to a number of factors. First there is the Communist Party-U.S.A., ever-loyal to Soviet Russia. This aged party realizes it cannot survive as a powerful influence unless it enters into the stream of the younger forces of the so-called "New Left." Hence its members may be found in the ranks of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), one of the major groups of the New Left. However, most youthful members of the New Left consider the Russians and their American followers to be "square" and "old hat"-products of a Soviet society which has gone soft and "bour­ geois," not so different, in their opinion, from the United States. The radical students themselves-described by one professor as "the spoiled children of the consumer society"-are another source of seeming contradiction. They have contempt for the urban, industrialized society,.with its congestion and pollution, which gave them a world of plenty but left them, they say, spiritually impoverished. Looking for new gods, they turn to men like Mao Tse-tung, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro-revolutionary figures who advocate guerrilla warfare. They may call themselves Marxists 12 COMMUNISM AND THE NEW LEFT or communists, but they must be distinguished from Communists with a capital "C," members of the official U.S. party. To complicate the picture further, we have two separate worlds among the Marxist left-one white, the other black. This separa­ tion is the will of young black radicals who seek to invert the original aim of Negroes to integrate into white society and who now advocate the kind of segregation that recalls the discredited positions of their white foes in the South of the United States and of Africa. Yet the revolutionary blacks have something in common with the radical whites-an addiction to communism (with a small "c"), to violence, and to guerrilla warfare. Another point to be kept in mind is the fact that the far left does not have a border which fixes a limit between the campus and the rest of the country. The movement Bows between the schools and the communities of the cities and towns. And it involves not only young people going to school but also older people who left school long ago or never went there. We are witnessing both an academic revolt and a political revolt-on-campus and off-campus-in search of a new university and a new society. This book seeks to arrange these diverse elements of the far left into some order to provide an overall view of the forces which are creating turmoil in the United States today. Condensed out­ lines of the principal components of the far left will be found in chapters one and five. Documents in which leading groups de­ scribe their plans to destroy the present system in the United States will be found in the appendix. 13 Chapter One The American Left: Old and New Not since the depression of the 1930s has the United States seen so much activity by individuals and groups preaching Marxism, communism, and revolution. On campuses, on streetcorners, dur­ ing mass demonstrations, speakers proclaim their determination to overthrow the capitalist system. After years of steady decline in membership and influence, the Communist Party-U.S.A. is reviving. Its leaders are regular visi­ tors to college campuses, where they expound the party line to student audieqces. Party members are welcomed into the ranks of the antiwar movement and into some civil rights groups. And 1968 saw the party return openly to politics with a presidential ticket under the party banner for the first time since 1940. The Communist Party is no longer alone on the far left. Some groups, formed after the Soviet-Chinese split in the world com­ munist movement, violently reject the Moscow-oriented Com­ munist Party-U.S.A. Others are the products of a new generation born after World War II. They are the youthful militants of the New Left. It is the New Left that is most often in the spotlight today. Its members often are among the leaders of antiwar demonstrations and campus disruptions. The New Left has turned parts of the Eight Major Components of the Far Left I. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) (a) Revolutionary Youth Movement I (RYM I) (The Weatherman) (b) Progressive Labor Party-Worker-Student Alliance (PLP) (c) Revolutionary Youth Movement II (RYM II) (d) Trotskyite groups: (1) Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) (2) Youth Against War and Fascism (3) Johnson-Forrest Group (4) Sparticist League (e)Communist Party-USA (CP-USA) and its youth group, the DuBois Clubs of America (f) Independents (radicals who oppose the war and the establishment but do not endorse revolution) II. Black Panther Party (BPP) Ill. Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC) IV. Black Student Unions (BSU) V. Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) VI. Republic of New Africa (RNA) VII. Youth International Party (Yippies) VIII. Freelancers: David Dellinger of National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam; Staughton Lynd of the Union of Organizers; Herbert Marcuse of University of California at San Diego; an esti­ mated 100 militant black groups such as the Nation of Islam; Ramparts magazine; The Guardian. THE AMERICAN LEFT: OLD AND NEW 15 Negro civil rights movement away from nonviolence and toward Black Power, and it is in the forefront of the latest attempt to instill Marxist ideas into the American labor movement. What are the differences between the Old and New Left? What do they hope to accomplish? What are their tactics? How suc­ cessful have they been? Old or New, the groups of the far left share the same long­ range goal: overthrow of the capitalist system in America. But they differ on how they would achieve this aim and on what would follow. The Communist Party preaches the current Soviet line of peaceful coexistence. Gus Hall, the Communist Party's top official, unlike Nikita Khrushchev, does not say that our grandchildren will live under communism.