LIBERATION June 1969 75 cents

Taking A Step Into America

On "Anti-Communism": Staughton Lynd Facing Up T? The Repression: Rennie Davis An Exchange: Carl Davidson and Greg Calvert Farewell to Reform-Revisited: Charles Forcey The Movement at Work: Springfield, Mass.: Tom Bell An American Socialist Community?: William Appleman Williams

A Guide To The Grand Jury: Cathy Boudin and Brian Glick

Paul Booth on Labor/ Vernon Grizzard on Sex and Leadership Sid Lens on Nixon/ Paul Goodman (poetry)/ Dave Dellinger Editorial: Nison's Peace Plan

.l!sident Nixon's " peace plan," presented with Madison I t is not only the rhetoric of Mr. Nixon, unfortunately, Avenue hoopla on May 14 as a " rea l breakthrough," was that remi nds us of Lyndon Johnson, but the plan itself. not only couched in the Lyndon Johnson rhetoric but Headlines the following morning left the impression that contained the usual gimmicks which have stamped all Nixon was offering to withdraw all American troops within American peace plans as hoaxes. If North Vietnam or the twe lve months. In fact. he did no such thing. He said that National Liberation Front were to accept it, it would mean if an agreement can be reached he would send home the not a complete settlement. but their liquidation and defeat. "majo r portions" of American forces during that time, Nixon, the premature J ohnsonite who wanted to se nd while the "remaining" troops would stop fighting and be an American army to Vietnam in 1954, not 1965, still regrouped in enclaves in South Vietnam These "remaining" bleats that we cannot "abandon" the millions of South soldiers would stay on until a second agreement could be Vietnamese who "placed their trust in us." If we did so it reached fo r a second mutual withdrawal. would "risk a massacre that would shock and di smay It takes no crystal ball to figure out the true obj ectives everyone in the world who values human li fe." Hitler could of Me ssrs. Nixon and Henry Kissinger. They would ship have made the sa me statement about Norway's Quisling home, sa y, 350,000 U.S. soldiers, leaving the " remaining" . and the thousands of other quislings throughout Europe. If 200,000 in their present military bases to act as political there is one decent person in South Vietnam who pl aced leve rage . exactly as Brezhnev has done in Czechoslovakia. his trust in the United States no one has yet uncovered Twelve months after a "settlement," with the scale of him. Should Americans, then, continue to die for crooks, fighting reduced, American casualties cut to a minimum, profiteers, and Hitler-l overs like General Ky , whom Nixon and the America n public lulled into apathy, Nixon would cannot "abandon"? find a hundred excuses for refusing to withdraw the Moreover what do we have in Vietnam now if not a remaini.ng military contingent. " massacre" that shocks and dismays the whole world? The He would, for instance , charge North Vietnam with Pentagon is bombing hundreds of thousands of people in failing to live up to its side of the bargain , or argue that "free fire " zones, where the order is to kill anything that the liberation troops are actually North Vietnamese in moves. It is burning down scores of villages, uprooting two disguise who should also be repatriated above the 17th to four million people and putting them into concentration parallel, or insist that the Laos civil war must be ended camps, burning people to death with napalm, spraying simultaneously, or something of that sort. Meanwhile the countless acres of land with defoliants, and putting it s chances of a free election or a true coalition government blessing on the arrest and torture of at leas t 20,000 would be on a par with the chances of Czech liberals to Vietnamese whose only crime is their desire for peace and function today with 75,000 Soviet troops on their soil. The neutralism. A report by a religious team on General Thieu's American troops would act as a back-up for a monumental tortures will soon be made public that will really shock the wave of repression by General Thieu, particularly in the world, assuming it can still be shocked by the war crimes so-called "contested" villages. of Washington and Saigon. This would not be the total military victory that

2 Liberation 10hnson and McNamara envisioned in 1965, but it would NLF that was doing more than 95 percent of the fighting. give Nixon the alternate victory of a Korean-type stale­ A t Manila, in October 1966, 10hnson had the liberals mate. A pro-American government, whether under Thieu or gaping again. This time he said the U.S . would withdraw its someone else, would be in power in Saigon, the United troops withjn six months. The joker was that it was six States would retain its military bases, and Southeast Asia months after North Vietnam withdrew its regiments, along would remain secure for American imperialism. The only with its "subversive forces," i.e. the "Viet Cong." In other obstacle would be the "Viet Cong" guerrillas, whom Nixon words six months after the "other side," including the hopes can be decimated to manageable proportions or who NLF, gave up the fight and repatriated themselves into would simply " disappear" as the guerrillas did in Malaya. I t is North Vietnam, the United States would begin to take out no accident that Cabot Lodge, the author of this disappear­ its forces. ance theory, is the American negotiator in Paris. Neither he On February 2, 1967 10hnson wrote a private letter to nor Nixon have changed their goal~ by as much as a Ho Chi Minh with still another offer, that he would end scintilla. Like Johnso n they are yielding to public pressures the bombing of the North if North Vietnam would stop its at home by providing candied phrases, but the essence of " infiltration." That's like exchanging Cadillacs for shoe their offer is still victory for the United States, defeat for laces. The United States would continue to keep 400,000 the "other side." or 500,000 men in South Vietnam and continue to supply It is well to recall that this was exactly the 10hnson its "ally," while North Vietnam would have to sever its ties technique. From December 1963 to April 1965 LBJ re­ with the NLF. Under such circumstances Lyndon was fused to consider negotiations of any kind because he wa s confident he could either win a military victory or reduce not harried by public outcry. He failed to respond to an the N LF to minor consequence. offer made through U Thant in December 1963. after the Nixon's May 14th " peace offer" is in the 10hnsonian fall of Diem, to end hostilities if the United States would tradition, and must be denounced for the same reasons. It recognize a "coalition neutralist government in Saigon." In is aimed not at achieving peace in Vietnam but peace in September 1964 he turned down U Thant's proposa l for the United States. Its purpose is to allay American hostility private meetings in Rangoon, Burma, on the excuse that an to the war by cutting down the scale of fighting and election campaign was in progress in the United States. casualties, while keeping the war going on a more favorable After the elections he turned down the idea aga in - through basis in Vietnam. poor Adlai Stevenson- and many months later we were told It won' t work, alas, anymore than LBJ's trickery work­ that the reason was Dean Rusk's "antennae" which told ed, if only because the " other side" too can read, and him that North Vietnam was not "serious." because a new generation of white and black youth in In April 1965, with all the academic clamor and the America will not be duped. The storm in the United States demonstrations of young people, 10hnson finally made h.i s will not blow over, because it is precisely against such 10hns Hopkins speech offering "unconditional discussions." hypocrisy and duplicity that it has been raging in the last The liberals, overawed as usual, cried "ah, at last," until few years. someone read the fine print which said that LBJ was S. Lens willing to discuss only with "governments" not wi th the On "Anti-Co••• munis••• "

];ose of us who are sharply critical of present tenden­ indisc riminate tolerance of all styles of participation in the cies in national SDS- that is, of both PLP and the " nation­ decision-making process. al collective"- are sometimes charged with anti-communism Some styles of politicking are objectionable in the move­ when we put these criticisms into words. This is a response men t, not because they are communist but because they to that charge. are undemocratic. Caucusing, for instance, tends to destroy No one, I think, wants to question the movement's trust and openness. It is hard to talk with someone in a historical commitment to non-exclusionism. Like so many he artfelt manner if you know he made up his mind in a elements of the movement in the early 1960's this concept caucus before the conversation began, or worse, if you only was defined in the contex t of work, rather than in the find this out when the conversation is over. I believe context of rhetorical correctness. As understood in SNCC, caucuses are inevitable and necessary in a large organiza­ non-exclusionism meant that if you did the work, no tion. But should we not be able to ask of caucuses, first, questions were asked about your political background and that their members publicly identify themselves and, sec­ ultimate political intentions. When a SCLC staff member ond, that attendance at any caucus be open to all who turned out to be a former member of the Communist wish to come? Party, SCLC fired him. When similar information came to Whether an organization is communist or non­ light about a SNCC staff member, the worker was retained. communist, whether it is centralized or decentralized, Non-exclusion.ism guaranteed the right of anyone sharing whether it makes decisions by voting or by consensus, in a radical organization's work to take part in decisions secretive, manipulative relationships between people will about that work. It did not mean, nor should it mean, tend to destroy it. Liberals, as we all know, can be the

June 1969 3 most accomplished manipulators. Nevertheless, in one way 1930's; a society without forced labor camps; a truly there is a connection between adherence to Marxism as a interracial society, rather than one which suppressed in total world view and exclusive guide to practice and a practice the nationalities whose liberties Stalin had cham­ manipulative political style. If you believe there is such a pioned in theory; and, last but not least, a society prepared thing as a scientifically "correct" political strategy, you will to risk its national existence on behalf of liberation move­ go on believing this even if a majority disagrees with you ; ments elsewhere, not one which cold-bloodedly suppressed, and you may be tempted to manipulate the decision­ muted, or failed to support other revolutions in Spain, making process to make it confirm what (you are con­ France, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, etc. vinced) is true. We struggled with the objections a) it was wrong to Hence, the Old Left was and is characteristically ma­ criticize Stalin because liberals also criticized him, b) we nipulative. The first time I experienced what one might call did not know enough about Stalinism to criticize it, Old-Left tactics in the New Left wa s at a meeting of the c) historical necessity required Stalin to do what he did, newly formed National Coordinating Committee to End the and found each of these arguments finally unpersuasive. I War in Vietnam in Washingt.on, D.C. The conference and think it is healthy for the movement to struggle again with organization were destroyed""'"by the Young Sociali st Alli­ these objections and I have complete confidence that an ance. Although representing only a small minority of the unintimidated scrutiny of the historical record will lead an thousand or so delegates, the YSA caucus turned the entire overwhelming majority of the movement to sustain the conference into a re ~pon s e to its maneuvers. My most vivid New Left's original decision to repudiate Stalinism. memory is the locked hotel room in which , by the end of This is not to deny, of course, the possibility of a the conference, the YSA was trying to form a new non-manipulative, libertarian Marxism. Rosa Luxemburg, organization. for one, exemplifies it. The problem with the Progressive Labor Party is similar. Those who argue for a disciplined cadre organization Members of PLP entered SDS in 1966 after a party often do so in the conviction that because repression is decision to dissolve the May 2nd Movement. 1n the hi story upon us, participatory democracy, perhaps internal democ­ of American radicalism, such de cis ions have usually bee n racy of any variety, is an expendable luxury. But the heavy exploitative, because the smaller group uses its sojourn in repression now underway is not yet fascism, and I do not the larger group to re cruit and then spl it s away aga in believe that a conspiratorial, quasi-underground style of leaving the organization it had presumably joined in good pol itics is the best way to combat it. I think, in fact, that faith demoralized and divided. The Trotskyists used th e what the movement needs now is the kind of commitment Socialist Party this way in the 1930's. The Communist to public, long-term organiz ing in a particular place or Party took advantage of a procession of Left-liberal move­ institutional nexus which makes the assumption that there ments in the same manner. 1 believe that , consi stent with is time to work patiently and experimentally as all real this model, both PLP and the national coll ec tive are organizing demands. Rennie Davis suggests elsewhere in this working to recruit a revolutionary cadre out of SDS no issue that the movement should not make defense against matter what the cost to SDS as an organically evolving repression its main political work. What the indicted or revolutionary mDvement. imprisoned organizer mo st desires of us is that we carryon the work he was trying to do . We cannot " take a step into Inthis connection, there arises the specific question of America" if our mood is one of wai ting for the knock on Stalinism, or to be less pejorative, of the movement's the door, and if our principal political work is the building attitude toward Stalin, toward his wr itings, and toward the of tigh tly disciplined exclusionary sects. period of Soviet development over which he pres ided. This Staughton Lynd is a question which I hope can be carefully explored in future issues of Liberation. (For in stance , I do not beli eve it to be a sufficient fundamental critique to reject " Stalin­ r------, ism" in the name of " Leninism." ) For the mo ment my I COMING: I concern is that movement people should not be intimidated from criticizing Stalinism. : A Report on the : In Europe, the New Left came into being in response to Khruschev's denunciation of Stalin at the Twentieth Con­ I New Left's First Generation I gress of the Soviet Communist Par ty and to the Soviet L ______J invasion of Hungary, both in 1956. In the United States, the repudiation of Stalinism was not a principle cause of Second Class pustage paid New Yurk . the development of the New Left, but that repudiation was N . Y. Nnvss uJIld distribution is taken for granted. It was assumed that we wanted a handled 1>.1' Hastel'll Ne ws Distributors. movement which would eschew the manipulative tactics of SlIbscription: I year $ 7. 00: individllal the Communist and Trotskyist parties. It was assumed that copies 75 cents. Make checks payable to LIBERA nON. Published Monthly the SOCiety we ought to create would be democratic, (except March-A pril. when bi-weekly) libertarian and humane which me ant, among other things, a by LIBERA TION at 139 Lafay ette society which would not purge its di ssidents as Stalin had Street. New York. N. Y. 10012. destroyed his own comrades in the purge trials of the Copyright 1969 by LIBERA TION

4 Liberation Toward Revolutionar~ Humanism

least there is heightened consciousness of what the real To the best of my memory it was Countee Cullen, a issues are, and the first experimental steps are being made sensitive black poet who later committed suicide, who toward raising the level of the debate, both in the rhetoric wrote in the Thirties that the reason black people laughed of the demands and in the methods of raising them. The so much was because when they opened their mouths they movement has discovered that in the absence of forceful had to laugh so that they wouldn't cry. confrontation (brought about by the seizure of buildings, For different reasons, those of us who advocate non­ strikes, the destruction of draft files and induction notices violent revolution find it hard these days to know whether or other direct disruptions of established procedures) the to exult or to weep. On the positive side, conflict and "rational discourse" so lauded by university authorities, • confrontation are growing more intense every day, in the editorial writers and other addicts of the status quo is slow, ghetto, on the campus, in the streets and public places of superficial and for the most part irrelevant. the country. There is a growing consciousness on the part All of this represents tremendous growth in a few short of non-whites, young people, welfare recipients, women, years, a growth for which the country owes a debt of draftees and others that the present society denies them gratitude to the Cuban revolutionaries, the incredibly their heritage of dignity, economic well-being and egali­ heroic Vietnamese and the black insurgency within our tarian control over their own lives. Moreover, a growing own country. Currently the Black Panthers and the Black number of these people-in-revolt now perceive that the Conference for Economic Development, together with the cause of their privation is not personal inadequacy, bad student revolutionaries of SDS, are continuing to transform rulers or the malfunctioning of the system. Rather it is the the context within which the movement as a whole frames nature and purpose of capitalism to create a class society, its questions and examines its tactics. both nationally and internationally, with vast inequalities in But history has taught that being anti-capitalist, coura­ wealth, power and privilege . If Randolph Bourne dis­ geous and militant are not sufficient guarantees for contri­ covered, during World War I, that war is the health of the buting to the birth of a lib erated and humanistic society. If state, the youth of our country know in their bones today the U.S. persistence in its aggression in Vietnam is an that inequality is the health of capitalism. And in their historical fact which is contributing to the deepening bones they reject this inequality, even when (especially anti-capitalist consciousness, the Soviet invasions of Hun­ when) they find themselves being channeled into privileged gary and Czechoslovakia and the continued post-Stalin positions, either as apprentices to the ruling class or as repress ion of individuals and groups advocating alternative trainees (both white and black) for the role of "house forms and tactics for the building of communism make niggers. " clear that non-capitalist societies can be brutal and dehu­ Along with this growing rejection of a society of class manizing as well. divisions and delegated democracy is a growing rejection of Even without the lessons of history, one can look the channels for social change within this society. It's not around and see a distressing recrudescence of Old Leftist so much a question of " lacking patience," as is sometimes tendencies and attitudes in the once New Left. The dis­ charged, but rather of realizing that the traditional methods covery that the forces of oppression, militarism, racism and do not lead in the right direction. The most that can be political repression are deep, deceitful and brutal, and accomplished through electoral politics, lobbying, govern­ cannot be dislodged by polite debate, has led some people mental commissions, polite negotiations with the authori­ to conclude that all debate is futile, except perhaps within ties (whether of the university or the government), non­ the secret confines of a theoretically democratic and as­ violent demonstrations within the framework of law and suredly centralist vanguard party. In practice such self­ order, is to shake loose a few benefits around the edges. elected vanguards rarely level with other revolutionary These benefits may have immediate practical value for the groups or with that vast reservoir of potential revolution­ recipients, but they are a small part of what is their aries who must be won over (not just manipulated) if the legitimate birthright and leave the recipients in the position revolution is to succeed. Some movement people have of second- or third-class citizens. At best they can elevate a inferred from the reformist nature of the nonviolent few beneficiaries into a slightly more privileged position movement of the late Fifties and early Sixties that smash­ within the established pecking order, as happened to skilled ing windows, beating up police and roughing up our workers under the reforms of the Thirties which legitimized antagonists are necessarily part of becoming a serious labor unions and divided the working class, making business revolu tionary. unionism a co-optive substitute for the liberating goal of But these are bad ways to educate people and win them worker-control. to the real freedom and universal solidarity of our cause. The movement has not yet discovered how to challenge If, as the saying goes, we are what we eat, a potentially the existing power centers effectively, but the built-in revolutionary movement becomes what it does. Today assumptions of the present society are gradually losing their people are still being won to the movement because they legitimacy in the eyes of its victims, including many who are revolted by what the system does to Vietnamese, G.I. 's, would normally be expected to become its future rulers. At non-whites, students and the poor; and, conversely, because

5 Liberation they are attracted to the fraternal, humanistic and liberat­ The Militant, and New Left Notes which purport to ing goals and style of the insurgents. But if the rhetoric describe the positions of rival groups are as grossly in­ and practice of some of the present advocates of "by any accurate as the statements of the government which led to means necessary" becomes the dominant reality, the new the well-known credibility gap. recruits will include more and more persons who enjoy It is unfortunate that some of the criticisms of the type street-fighting for its own sake or get a neurotic kick out that are appearing in Liberation are also being made by of beating up other people. If the movement succumbs to people who do not share either the movement's revolu­ the notion that there is one vanguard party which has the tionary goals or its awareness of the need for increased correct ideology, tactic and style and that all deviation is militance. It is absurd that both the privileged elite and the counter-revolutionary, it will attract and encourage those timid moderates have become spokesmen these days for who are rigid, doctrinaire and repressive. Instead of becom­ "nonviolence." University Presidents and government offi­ ing a family of revolutionaries who are united in some cials condemn the seizure of buildings as "violent," but concepts and activities but have their family differences have no words of condemnation for the real violence of about other matters, we will become a set of feuding sects, R.O.T.C., police and court repression, or university compli­ incapable of learning from our allies or of mounting a city in war and counter-insurgency. The authorities who genuine united front against political repression, racism, the frame the Black Panthers on imaginary plots to bomb Vietnam war and capitalism. Already SDS was treated to department stores are themselves engaged in blowing up the spectacle of a caucus of about 200 members who every store, home, church and village in liberated Vietnam. refused to join in the applause, at the National Council [n the general debasement that the word "nonvio[ence" has meeting in Austin, when it was announced that the Oakland suffered, it may be necessary for those of us who are Seven had been acquitted of the conspiracy charges anxious to preserve the humanistic sensitivity and content brought against them for their activities in Stop the Draft of the revolution to find another word to sum up the real Week. Already some of the articles appearing in Challenge. content of what we are advocating. - Dave Dellinger

In this issue:some urgent - and recurring - problems In his article in tltis issue, Rennie Davis recalls that ltis "I have come to the conclusion that Leninism is an North Vietnamese hosts in 1967 were not interested in incorrect direction for the New Left and that our task displaying the atrocities of war, but, rather "their problems must be to begin to find new models of revolutionary and successes in building a new society underneath the practice and organization which correspond to the bombs . ... Their preoccupation was with organizing a American advanced capitalist social order. ... I ... feel people's revolution, not with the 'repression' being visited that the Communist movement which grew in response upon them." Several contributors to the present issue to the Bolshevik success in Russia is dead as a revolu­ address themselves to a question of great urgency to the tionary force ..." movement: in a period characterized by virulent state These are classic problems in the history of socialist and repression, how do we expand the base of revolutionary libertarian movements- problems which may well need re­ commitment while we insure our survival. assessment in the light of our current situation: the William Appleman Williams argues that if the movement question of a "mass" as opposed to a "vanguard" party, is to have a future, we must "convince those vast numbers and the question of authoritarian structures within the of human beings that we can take the productive apparatus revolutionary movement which, in Calvert's view, vitiate of mature capitalism and reorganize it for their benefit." personal freedom and democratic control. Davidson takes a But are we now moving, concretely, in ways that can different approach, in fact, understands the problem differ­ realize this goal? ently: Staughton Lynd criticizes certain groups for "working to "What's wrong with trying to build a vanguard recruit a revolutionary cadre out of SDS no matter what party? ... Even the most staunch Leninists in SDS are the cost to SDS as an organically evolving revolutionary against a 'dehumanizing' vanguard. Are all vanguard movement . ... We cannot 'take a step into America'," parties dehumanizing? And if so, why? To say the least, Lynd concludes, "if our political work is the building of the question is begged." tightly diSCiplined exclusionary sects." The article of Tom Paul Booth's reflections on the difficulties of trade Bell may exemplify what Lynd praises as "public, long­ union organizing, and William Appleman Williams' strictures term organizing" and what Greg Calvert has called "meet­ against a "Left" still operating impulsively and within the ing people where they are at." definitions of nineteenth century radicalism throw a further We print this month Carl Davidson's comments on Greg light on the issues raised by the Calvert-Davidson Calvert's article in the May Liberation, as well as Calvert's encounter. response to Davidson. Both deal with the problem of organizational forms within the movement. Calvert defines We hope in further issues of Liberation to explore such the problem as follows, with specific reference to the questions more deeply, and the comments of readers are current practice of the New Left: warmly invited.

6 Liberation liBERATION June 1969 Volume 14, number 3

EDITORIALS

2 Nixon's Peace Plan Sid Lens

3 On "Anti-Communism" Staughton Lynd

5 Toward Revolutionary Humanism Dave Dellinger

ARTICLES

8 An American Socialist Community? William Appleman Williams

12 Facing Up To Repression Rennie Davis

16 The Movement At Work : Springfield, Mass. Tom Bell

21 Fro m Diary of Makapuu (poetry) Paul Goodmall

22 Farewell To Reform-- Revisited CharlesForcey

27 The International Monetary Crisis Bill Crawji)rd

28 A Guide To The Grand Jury Cathy Boudin alld Brian Glick

COMMUNICATIONS

32 An Exchange on the Politics of "Guilt" Carl Davidson and Greg Calvert

37 A Response To Jim Matles of the U. E. Paul Booth

39 Letter to the Movement: On Sex and Leadership Vernon Grizzard

Our feature artist this month is Joyce Sills, a Editorial Board Associate Editors young graphic artist and painter, whose work, Powelton Fire, appears on our cover. The range of AJ. Muste (1885-1967) Kay Boyle her work extends from woodcuts and children's Dave Dellinger , Editor Nat Henton" Barbara Deming Mulford Siblcy book illustrations to her current preoccupation, Paul Goodman color silk-screens and acrylic painting_ Readers Staff Sidney-Lens interested in seeing more of her work can write Staughton Lynd Raul Cassetto Joyce Sills at 149 Spring St., New York City. Jcanne Friedman (art) David Gelber Lamar Hoover Liberation is deeply grateful to Bruce Erlich of the Hilory Soltanoff Guardian Typesetting Service who not only composed the Barbara Webster present issue, but provided much valuable editorial assis­ tance_ Susan Holstrom, _also of the Guardian, was indis­ pensable to the production phase of the issue.

June 1969 7 An American Socialist Community? William Appleman Williams

In moving about the country a good bit the last four years-from the campuses to the metropolis and through the provinces- I have repeatedly been struck by two things. The first is the accuracy of Harold Cruse's observation: "Americans generally have no agreement on who they are, what they are, or how they got to be what they are . ... All Americans are involved in an identity crisis." The second is that the Left, or The Movement as the jargon has it, is not doing very much that is effective in dealing with that dangerous but potentially creative situation.

There is no persuasive evidence that The Movement is in the process of becoming a social movement of the kind that can generate and push through major reforms on a continuing basis - let alone institute structural changes-in American society. Whatever the victories of the Left, there are a good many indications that the activities of The Movement are increasing the concern and willingness within The Establishment to reform and rationalize the corporate sys tem according to its own adaptation of our criticisms. An d so me actions of the Left are creating growing support for repressive policies (as contrasted with suppression in spec ific crises).

1j\ere are t~o orthodox comments at this point. One maintains that the revolution is being made by people doing their own thing: that if you leave the System it will collapse. If that is correct. then we either coll apse with it or confront the necessity of a new ruthlessness to build the replacement. The other argument maintains that Establishment reforms will not- even cannot- go fa r enough quickly enough to avert a crisis that will open the way for The Movement. I do not rule out that possibility. But I do not think it is probable because t·he analysis overlooks, or discounts, several major considerations.

One : while American society is sick, it is not sick to th~ verge of rolling over dead, or even to the point that a good push will topple it into History. The will to maintain the system is real and visible and consequential. Two: an Establishment trying to reform itself will , for a long period, hold the loyalty of most of those who are reluctant to repress, as well as those who are now ready to maintain the National Guard on standby alert. This is particularly true so long as the Left makes no discriminations among and within other groups in society, makes no sustained effort to involve them as participating equals in a non-elitist movement, and offers nothing to attract them into such a venture. Three: things can not onl y get worse as a short run prelude to getting better, but can get worse for an indefinite period.

8 Liberation There simply cannot be an era of radical reform, or structural change, without a living conception of community and a clearly developed approach to alternatives to meet the needs of America in an equitable and effective manner. Much of the Left is operating-consciously or unconsciously-under the illusion that the United ~tates maay is comparable to England twixt 1660 and 1688, France in 1789, Russia in 1917, or one of the many poor and non-industrial countries of the contemporary world It has become fashionable to call this the New Romanticism, and defend it with orthodox irrationality. It would be better, for the honor of true Romanticism, and for our own well-being (to say nothing of the millions of poor and powerless), to call it ignorance at best-innocent or arrogantly self-righteous as warranted by the specific case-and at worst the most insidious kind of anti-in tellectualism. .

It flatly will not do, in the last third of the 20th century, to pretend-or simply assert-that we in the United States can indulge ourselves in an indefinite period of I willy-nilly-working-out-of-a-new-order. Nor is it meaningful to talk about anarchy or self-contained communes of i mutually compatible couples. Or of the underground that ~ can provide you with subsistence for a year. There is no more justification for putting people off in that fashion than there r is for putting people down. Yet The Movement is doing a good deal of both.

Eldridge Cleaver heated up the soul on this issue as hotly as anyone. "We start with the premise that every man, woman and child on the face of the earth deserves the very highest standard of living that human knowledge and technology is capable of providing. Period. No more than that, no less than that." That is not really enough, or at least it is seriously open to the charge of mistaking economism for socialism (or whatever other name for the new order you prefer), but it is more than sufficient to end the explicit and implicit nonsense of The Movement that mundane matters will take care of themselves come the revolution. They do not now, which is one of our criticisms, and they will not do so even 10 years after the revolution if we do not see to it ourselves. Cleaver, Schumpeter, and Marx. All three were correct. Still are correct. Cleaver's proposition, explicitly expanded to In one of his classic throw-away lines, Schumpeter once include intellectual, cultural, and interpersonal matters, will remarked that socialism was a post-economic problem. In a stand as the "no less than that" of an American radicalism. strict sense that is true. Socialism is, or at any rate should be, But to get on with realizing that objective we have to deal about the nature and functiOning of a community, rather with the implications of Schumpeter's point about socialism. than about the failings of the capitalist system. And a We have, that is, to speak to the nature of a new economy community is not created, let alone maintained, by everyone and to the philosophic, physiological, and psychic simply doing their own thing. Adam Smith wrote that foundations for a man who is not, as Adam Smith prescription for heaven on earth in 1776, and after 200 years maintained, defined by his propensity to barter and trade in we ought to be able to recognize the limitations. But the marketplace. The Left, old or new, has yet to answer Schumpeter's arrow did not hit the center of the bullseye. either question. For Marx accurately noted that while capitalism created the means for solving the economic problem it could not organize and use those powers to fulfill its avowed reason for I t is no longer relevant to prove that socialists can being. operate (albeit more fairly and more efficiently) the

June 1969 9 While American society is sick, it is not sick to the verge of roUing over dead, or even to the point that a good pmh wiU topple it into History

centralized and consolidated economic system created by And of course that brings us to the two nut-crackers. One: mature capitalism That would have been very helpful if we we do not have a meaningful conception of what it is to be had come to power between 1894 and 1914, but the an American. We have instead a collection of disjointed notes challenge today is to maintain and increase productivity on what it does not mean, and a vague assertion that all while breaking the Leviathan into community-sized things will be beautiful and lovely come the revolution. elements. And while the Hippies have blasted througn some of the walls that capitalism erected around true humanism, Two: we ought to transcend our narrowness in faulting they are very largely operating as a self-defined interest group Marx for being over 30 when we know he is over 100. Marx in the classic sense of 19th century capitalism. It is no answer saw the necessity-moral and practical-for radical socialist to Smith to define individualism in Freudian terms, or some change at a time when capitalism was plumbing the other human propensity. foundations for its century of great creativity. That was his genius. Our stupidity, at least so far, has been to think and So what we come down to, Cruse to the contrary talk about today and tomorrow so largely in terms of 1885. notWithstanding, is Marx. It is so obvious as to be the cliche For, in an eerie way, much of the Left is still operating in of the era: capitalism has demonstrated a congenital terms of the 19th century world. The Hippies are almost a incapacity to use its literally fantastic powers and mirror reversal of full-blown Victorianism. The Communists achievements to enable untold members of the lower and are almost a mirror reversal of late 19th century corporate middle classes-and even many in the upper class-to live as reformers. And there are similar comparisons with the human beings. But Marx also said that the purpose and the anarchists and the Brook Farmers. responsibility of The Movement was twofold: to extend, deepen, and focus the awareness of that failure , and to But, even though he fails to exploit it, Cruse does have a organize the people of the society to use the powers created point about Marx. Taken literally, Marx is irrelevant because by mature capitalism in humane and creative ways. the only way to deepen and focus the radical social consciousness of the large numbers of women and men of So far there is less irrelevant about Marx than there is our time is to tell them in concrete and specific terms how parochial about The Movement. The issues here are not the their lives can be richer and purposeful. There is simply not tactics of disruption, provocation, and violence. At least not any time or justification for us to be vague like Marx, for many (including myself) who lack the training or guts to technocratic ally optimistic like Lenin, romantically be pacifists, or feel morally queasy about righteously irresponsible like Trotsky, or latter-day agrarians like Mao provoking the worst in other men we know are not prepared and Castro. to transcend their prejudices in a moment of crisis, or consider non-violent revolution as a strategy appropriate only If we are going to have a social movement, we will have to for an established socialist society. I do not think it is build it on the basis of a workable answer to the eminently pOSSible-even under the best of circumstances- to move fair demand from our potential constituency among the from mature capitalism to established socialism without lower and middle classes. Why and how will socialism be any considerable disruption and some amount of blood. better than a capitalism without the Vietnam War and with a continuing (and improving) pattern of permissive welfarism The central matter, however, concerns when- in what We have, that is, to convince those vast numbers of human context and for what purposes-we disrupt and spill blood. I beings that we can take the productive apparatus of mature think there has been a good deal of both that has not capitalism and reorganize it for their benefit. That means produced any sustained deepening and fOCUSing of radical erasing two primary lines in their image of the Left. One is consciousness. It has been my observation, as well as the line that connects radical structural change with things experience, that six months of quiet work in the dormitories, getting worse than they are. The other line connects or ot going up to the doorbell for a half-hour conversation, radicalism with radicals doing their own things at the expense has deeper and more lasting consequences than the of large numbers of other people. occupation of a building or the provocation of a bust. It was, after all, the teach-ins rather than the marches that played I am very skeptical that we can meet that challenge the major role in generating the now widespread opposition through a strategy based on the declining age of the majority to the Vietnam War. -Cruse is everlastingly correct on a of the population; at least not as it is now being attempted visceral point: we must create and generalize CI:r conception by various campus groups. For one thing, most Americans do of what it means to be an American. not define their hopes for a better society in terms of

10 Liberation university refonn To use the jargon, that is not relevant to them. Frankly, I sympathize with that for, while it is --~... ~ib:::::' important to me personally in the short-run and to me as a socialist in the long-run, it is not nearly as central as building an inclusive social movement capable of forCing the Establishment to give large chunks of ground on primary issues affecting the majority of my fellow citizens. Secondly, as presently organized and conducted, the campus wing of The Movement is not making any serious outreach to its own recent members- McCarthy and Kennedy are all the footnotes needed on that point.

I think another strategy warrants serious consideration. It has three parts.

One: use the campus as a base for reaching the community. This means, in connection with campus action, preparing the ground in the city and the state for the ultimate confrontations on campus. It means, in the broader sense, using the campus as what it is-a generator of ideas-and as a center of serious intellectual activity dealing with the problems of the general society. A radical movement that weakens, or even destroys, the university to gain secondary and symptomatic reforms is not demonstrating a convincing case for general leadership of the society.

Two : stop evading the legitimate demands for clear and convincing proposals for the new American community. If we cannot meet that request, then we are irrelevant. It is at best a di singenuous way of putting people down ; it is at worst hard evidence of intellectual incompetence. And, for ourselves, we ought to be able to learn from Russia and China that the lack of clear ideas and programs can lead to all kinds of serious moral and practical troubles. Three: start dealing with large numbers of Americans, however misled or mistaken we may consider them, as human beings rather than as racists and stupids to be jammed up against the wall. For the self-righteous arrogance in The Movement is at least as dangerous to its future as The Establishment. • . 1

n William Appleman Williams is a distinguished American s historian whose published works include The Contours of s American History and The Tragedy of American Diplo­ s macy. He is now teaching at Oregon State University, s \, Corvallis. e

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11 Two badges flash across some beefy fingers , too quick to see the identifi­ cation numbers. "Officer Bell's my name. This here is Officer Luggio. We're assigned to you, Davis, as long as you're in town with these hippies and yippies. Make it easy on both of us, hear? We want the rundown on where you're going and coming and where you're staying, that's all. And I wouldn't try any fancy stuff at shaking us or anything like that. It'd make us look bad back at the district, and, mister, if you make us look bad, we're gonna have to make you look real bad . . .." Here comes the ridiculous extreme of that American theory that reduces the demonstrators, riots and revolu­ tions in the world to the work of the "outside agitator." Here is the actual man getting paid to show up and walk the streets behind the "leader" who is suspected for his travels state to state, stirring up civil disorders. The notor­ ious troublemaker is pursued into the bathroom, down to the beach, over to the television studio, up to the door­ step of the bedroom and to any other spot where disruption or chaos might break out. Living in the free world, it's some­ what easier to dismiss this intrusion into a man's life as a humorous acci­ dent. One can accept it graciously the way you accept a high school teacher or welfare caseworker. The government tail is friendly. He has his clever jokes ("Davis seems to like that Chinese food," one says, followed by great FACING UP TO REPRESSION howls of laughter.) The tail looks after Rennie Davis you in a world of constant danger. ("Our job is to protect you," he says. "A lot of people around here want you dead as a fucking door, you know. We want to make sure nothing mean happens to you. It's like you was President of the United States.") But, above all, the tail is a professional, a career man, carefully selected and trained by that developed American

12 Liberation mind which reasons this country has with the whisper of the word-repres­ makes it a crime to travel interstate no social problems, only "outside agi­ sion. It's becoming The Worry of the with the intent of fomenting a riot (a tators," the same mind that figures the movement and, at another level, it' s riot is two or more people who break war in Vietnam can be won by assas­ the talk of the Justice Department, the a law). Regional travelers will be forc­ sinating 85,000 Viet Cong "leaders" center that will unleash whatever is to ed into penitentiaries for this crime of (Operation Phoenix) or by sealing up come. Some people have stopped radical speech. the demilitarized zone to hold back working, they're so busy thinking In addition, the current tactics of the North Vietnamese "outsiders" (the about it all coming down. And Nixon's repression will be vastly accelerated: McNamara wall). got a strategy that aims to bring it new state laws that prohibit any tactic :y down. The outline of his plan is al­ that seems to be gaining effectiveness, 'i­ Of course, it sometimes turns out ready apparent (lnd is worth describing, congressional witch-hunt hearings, Iy that it's "Officer Bell" who wants you for behind its double-barrel purpose propaganda reports from various state o. dead as a fucking door. One tail met lies the objective of not only "stopping and national investigatory commissions, as me at the airport in Chicago and de­ the dissenters" but diverting public at­ police spy infiltration, an unending Id clared that if I would cooperate, he tention away from the war in Vietnam. procession of grand jury investigations, s, would protect me from his police part­ The war needs more time to "win," court injunctions, FBI visits to the re ner who had a bullet in his pocket according to the fantasies of the Penta­ homes of parents, police raids on re with my name on it. Once in Washing­ gon. And another public issue could movement offices, more tails, more I ton, D.C., I turned a corner with two defuse the domestic pressures against mace, more expUlsions, subpoenas and 19 tails behind me and decided to try a continuing in Vietnam. That issue, convictions. And when mace and clubs aren't enough, they will bring out the 1S little run for it. When they turned the packaged through the media as the d, same corner and saw me about 50 campus disrupters and black power shotguns and shoot us, as Reagan has re yards ahead of them, galloping, one militants, is us. We are to be made the done. al yelled, " Stop or I'll shoot." I stopped. smokescreen that allows the war to go The other partner tail then said, "No, on. Nixon's plan is to isolate and crush le no, that's not right." I got away with Nixon's repression project is simple: the "hard-core," to frighten the "ideal­ es the mix-up about the orders of the mIX1l1g punishment. fear and co­ ists," and to add some social change u­ day. Not too unconunon was the re­ optation. Part one is to "get the lead­ that shows the infinite flexibility and Ie mark of one Chicago tail, during the ers." Even though everyone knows that reasonableness of American capitalism al Democratic Convention: "After this the average "disrupter" hates leaders, (abolish the draft ; perhaps legalize mari­ Ik motherfucking protest, I'm gonna doesn' t have any, and depends on no juana). is stomp you to death, fucking commie." one individual for his politics, direc­ The mere mention of these plans is e, Your average, local tail is about as tion, energy or passion, the TV­ enough to shake some people out of .r- much protection as facing a hail storm spawned spokesmen of the movement the movement. Others joke about it, le naked. will be dragged into courts, indicted on these signs of our future, the constant to If you complain to the judge about vague charges of " inciting to mob ac­ threats, the phone calls that say "your ·r- the constant death threats by the po­ tion" or "conspiracy." Once these vile time has come, conunie," the police er lice agent who follows you everywhere, conspirators are shown to be behind pledges to put someone away perma­ tlt the judge tells you to call the police. the misguided conduct of America's ently. Most radicals are continuing When the police headquarters are youth, the government will dramati­ their work as before, while around the e­ phoned, the man who answers never cally expose that they are also agents country, our offices are installing new m heard about "any tail assigned to of foreign enemy powers (someone security devices, doors are bolted, shot :i­ you." So, you go about your business made a trip to Cuba). There will be guns are purchased and hung in back le with grown men, running their car much publicity accompanying the closets, strangers are frisked for wea­ er bumper-to-bumper behind yours, fol­ judges' five-year sentences. pons at the door. As the official toler­ nt lOwing on foot everywhere you walk, ance of radicals narrows and our threat es waiting hours outside some office or ~e second part of Nixon's assault to the power structure becomes more se house they think you are in. At the will be the "outlawing" of the revolu­ serious, we will require a strategy of at trial, the friendly tail turns unfriendly tionary organizations, especially the defense consistent with long-term poli­ er witness, stepping forward, swearing for Black Panther Party and Students for a tical objectives and based on the prin­ :r. the truth, and laying down this story Democratic Society. The current police ciples of self-defense, a definition of 'so that could come right out of Official practice of gunning down Panthers in the enemy, a class analysis of the nt Detective magazine. When you get into their conununities will continue, along repressive apparatus designed to keep N. the courtroom, you stop wondering with the dramatic uncovering of us in line, support for defense based In what the tail's about. The only ques­ "secret plots" to blow up white on coalition rather than a narrowing as tion you have is, should we kill the people. Panthers will also be indicted circle of political friends, survival and a It, tails or let them kill us? under the Smith Act, which makes it a clear articulation of the politics behind a With the first signs of tails, the first crime to advocate the overthrow of the our "crime." Above all, a defense must Id waves of indictments and serious pri­ government. SDS will be the chief vic­ not be isolated from ongoing activities m . son sentences, the movement buzzes tim of the 1968 Anti-Riot Law which of the movement. It must be made

June 1969 13 into an integral part of organizing and stemming from convention week is a education in the community. 74-year-old man, tied to a corporation When I traveled to North Vietnam engaged in weapon production for in the Fall of 1967, the Vietnamese I Vietnam. He is expected to pass judge­ met talked little about war atrocities. ment on young people whose "crime" They did not parade before me victims warfare research by a national under­ includes militant opposition to the of napalm and anti-personnel bombs. I ground network of superpatriots makes war. A man who has the financial had to seek out these people and their the Minutemen a serious source of ability to buy his way into the judge­ personal stories. The Vietnamese want­ future trouble. People are inclined to ship, a man who has an immediate ed Americans to know of their prob­ understand self-defense only after a dislike for those he must judge, should lems and successes in building a new friend like Dick Flacks has been nearly be condemned along with the system society underneath the bombs- the un­ killed sitting in his university office. of injustice for which he stands. derground schools and hospitals, the Then it is too late. Defense must not serve the enemy's road brigades and women's liberation purpose of isolating us from the groups, the agricultural cooperatives, Adefense strategy requires defini­ people, If pOSSible, defense should ap­ and village self-defense units. Their pre­ tion of the enemy, the idea that there peal to an even broader constituency occupation was with organizing a is a complex of forces dangerous to than the act of speech or program that people's revolution, not with "the re­ the movement. People think they can brought on the attack We don't have pression" visited upon them by the "educate" the FBI agent who drops to "water-down our politics" to appeal U.S. Air Force. Repression is not the around for a conversation or that the to the liberals or uncommitted work­ issue, and any movement that pushes innocence of a friend can be explained ers, But we ought to develop many its own defense to the center loses. to the star chamber grand jury. Again tactics in a broad defense strategy that Our defense must begin with edu­ and again, such people unwittingly permits support from a variety of poli­ cating people to the idea of self­ help lay the basis for the indictment. tical constituencies. I do not expect defense, that against attacks on our There is no agency· 01 the' government. liberals to support the politiCS of the persons or organizations, we have the with WhiCh we should cooperate eight defendants in the conspiracy right to defend ourselves. The front­ (though certain outfits like HUAC may trial. They will not like the content of line danger to the most radical groups be turned into a public forum to dem­ the trial. But I would defend active in the country are police and the grow­ onstrate our contempt for such com­ involvement of any group that wants ing American right wing, particularly mittees). to work against the um;onstitutional its para-military operation, the Minute­ A defense strategy must teach Anti-Riot law or Smith Act. A court men. The assassination attempt on Her­ people that law is an instrument for defense includes many aspects: educa­ bert Aptheker in 1967, the abortive repression rather than justice. You tion, fund-raiSing, legal preparation, the attacks on the pacifist encampments at never hear of the case of a super­ issue of civil liberties, the politics of Voluntown, Conn., Wingdale, N. Y. and market owner being clubbed by a cop the defendants, self-defense, etc. Camp Midvale in New Jersey, the thou­ for overcharging his customer or fed­ Through a creative variety of defense sands of names compiled on lists mark­ eral marshals rushing into the White tactics, we can attract new people to ed for death, the stockpiling of arms in House to arrest a President for the the movement. underground bunkers and the active murder of Vietnamese. My own judge Not every court case can be turned experimentation in chemical-biological in the case of the federal indictment into a "political" trial · where one ad-

14 Liberation As the government becomes ~ore repressive in its attempt to maintain order and to divert attention away from the war, as more military bases are put under lock and key to prevent troops from having contact with the anti-war movement, as more stockade rebellions occur, as expulsions from universities for political activity begin to reach the tens of thousands, the number of people who are willing to support insurrection will grow. I use the word insurrection deliberately. Our power no longer exists to soften public opinion. I t exists in making people understand that to the men who rule this Empire, public opinion is a com­ modity to be manipulated, a weather vane of potential disaster to be read and measured, but hardly a force to be heeded. The force that they fear is the force of insurrection, the large scale active disregard of the repressive appar­ atus that has been created to keep people in line. That is our best defense . • trial , for instance, succeeded in arous­ Rennie Davis, a long-time movement ing a sympathetic and often militant activist, was among the eight indicted public response. Such trials insure the for conspiring to "incite riot" at the movement's survival and promote its Democratic Convention last summer. growth. dresses himself to the outside com­ munity rather than to the capitalist I n our conspiracy trial in Chicago, judge. In some cases, there is little or we hope to turn the courtroom into a no public interest. The movement is schoolhouse for the nation. The gov­ not capable of generating that in terest. ernment wants to show that it was our The issues involved have no funda­ intention to foment a riot in Chicago. mental principle that must be de­ We're going to show that conspiracies fended . Survival is the only issue at of small groups are not the cause of stake. the popular opposition growing in At other times, however, a trial America. The government will not find offers the opportunity of a large public a handful of people responsible for forum, an unfolding drama in which riots, demonstrations, or protest of any many people are participating and variety. Only real problems and condi­ others are curiously watching to learn tions of oppression move people to more of our purposes. Huey Newton's demand change and to struggle for it.

June 1969 15 The Movement-at Work ,: springfield,ma .. _ - sS _ ~~ __~_~~ __~_...-. _ Tom Bell ~--~- ==------~~-~--- -,---~

We are attempting in the Springfield area to unless they can get together and work in their build a radical organization which cuts through the common interests. In brief, our long range goal as superficial differences which normally divide Amer­ presently defined is to build a "political union" ican working people. Springfield has had no signifi­ which can give a strong (even controlling) voice to cant movement activity in the recent past and so the working people of the area in all the political our work is free from the usual left factionalism or and economic decisions which affect their lives. organizational jealousies. On the other hand, we In Springfield, as elsewhere, we are up against a are starting from scratch, and the usual myths deep, often unadmitted sense of powerlessness which divide people are quite strong in the popula­ when confronted with the real issues which face us tion as a whole. People still act as though they as American working people. Basic to this sense of believe that prestige has some real value as defined powerlessness is the educated inability of most by the society's present standards. Thus, different Americans to conceive of any alternative to the ' job categories give excuse for contempt of the American way of doing things. Other societies are people in other job categories even though most presented to us as irrelevant. Some countries are everyone in the area is selling their labor power to "underdeveloped"-which equals bad; others are some employer who gets the real benefit of that "communist"-which equals bad; and the rest are labor. Racist attitudes are strong. "Sexist" atti­ "just about like us"-which equals almost as good. tudes also are strong-so strong as to be often The propaganda is tremendous: revolutions always unrecognized by the women. The women act as make things worse-after all, look at Stalin. And domestic servants and as slaves to the economy's high school language courses study the "culture" growing need for mass consumption. They are left of the home land of the language by asking "What to wonder why they feel such despair. Suburban is their Thanksgiving like?" But powerlessness goes dwellers scorn city people and city problems even beyond this lack of an alternative. Most people at though life will continue to be oppressive for both least know that the rich have a lot of power, but

16 Liberation they don't want to think about it too much at church and other groups. It seems that even this because "that's the way things are," or "you can't relatively small amount of activity has made fight City Hall," or "don't rock the boat." The people aware of us in this town where less activity feeling, it seems, is that we will just make trouble is the norm. Many people's hopes have been raised. for everybody by trying to change things. I think But it is not easy to create a sustained effort. The this is the basis of the antagonism toward the powers-that-be watch us carefully and harass us movement: people think that if we push too much when they can, and the people here have seen or make people think too much that they will lose other attempted groups fizzle and are not flocking the things they have-things which they have been to give us active support, though they may agree carefully convinced to accept in lieu of a full life. with us. II Our strategy is to demonstrate to people that a small elite in fact runs Springfield, that they are not the elected officials (though these officials certainly help them), and that they use power to serve their own interests at the expense of the population as a whole. Simultaneously we must show that by working together the people of the area can get specific changes which are to our benefit. To be clearly in the direction of our goal, the tactics we select must have a clear radical content (which is to some extent inherent in anything which exposes the functioning of the ruling elite) and must serve to build our organiza­ tion. The first step in such a strategy, of course, is to build a solid nucleus of a group. This initial building has been the basis of our efforts since the founding of Springfield Area Movement for a Demo­ cratic Society in November, 1968. The composition of the group of people who have come together in MDS is different from that of most movement organizations in the country. We have in the same organization high school students, college students, and working people. The nucleus of the 180 or so people who have come to meetings contains all three categories, but is predominantly young working people. Among these are several social workers, a waitress, a factory worker, an auto body mechanic, a person­ nel manager, a welfare mother, a couple of house­ wives, a VISTA worker, several students, and so on. So far we have worked mostly to build a sense of community and personal contact so essential to any truly radical activity. It is a slow process in a society structured to keep people isolated and focused on individual security (or security for the family unit). In the last six months we have tried to work Our Movement Workshop was busted up. On publicly in several ways. We had two successful two successive days the windows in our storefront ~ rock concerts; we had a rally for peace that were broken-damage totalling $300. In neither attracted 250 people on a cold, rainy day; we case did the police report the incident to the attempted to get two SDS chapters recognized as landlord or investigate. In the second instance, the campus groups of their respective colleges; we two large plate-glass windows in the front were opened a Movement Workshop in the downtown shattered all over the sidewalk and street for over area intended for printing, draft counselling and 24 hours on Sunday until one of the people small meetings; we tried to petition in one of the working in the building reported it to the landlord high schools for an end to hair and dress regula­ on Monday morning. Our workshop was on a main tions, and we have held several discussions of MDS street in town and must have been seen by the

June 1969 17 police who patrol the street constantly. In addi­ The Springfield newspapers are all under one reac­ tion, the landlord was contacted by "authorities" tionary ownership. There is a small underground whom he would not identify. As a result he paper coming out of the Religion and Arts Com­ evicted us. It is clear that we have no police mittee of the Unitarian Church. We are working protection and probably police harassment. with this project, and feel that it will be helpful in So far we have relocated one of the presses. getting our views across. We may do some of the The Black Student Union, with which we have a printing for it at the workshop. growing alliance, found a place at Uplift, Inc., one What are our tactics for the near future? We of the independent Black poverty agencies. That have two tactics which have already been in the press is a small Multilith and will be used for short planning stage for some months. One, the Spring­ run jobs, especially for the newspaper of the field Area Free School, is designed basically to work on developing the solid nucleus for the movement and the sense of community which we need. The other, the Bay State West project is a good example of the kind of public tactic which

we need to overcome the gnawing sense of power- I lessness on the part of working people.

As originally planned, the Free School was to be located in a house that we would purchase. The printing facilities, meeting rooms, library, dark room, and day-care center would all have been in one place. After the wor kshop was busted we decided that we were in no position to defend a house-that centralizing our things in that way would make us much too vulnerable to whoever might want to put us out of operation. We decided to decentralize the Free School as much as pos­ sible. And we have moved in that direction by setting up two printing places. We now plan to hold group meetings in various places, to set up the library in someone's apartment, and to work out a day-care center somehow. The Free School will be initiated at a general MDS meeting May 19th. Its structure is loose and should allow us to meet people's various interests. Twelve of us are now in the process of preparing outlines for various groups to begin meeting after the 19th. Each person will I take responsibility for organizing · his or her group. The groups are either research groups designed to seek out information which will be valuable as background for action, skills groups, or study groups. The ones to start this month include a B.S.U. and for two high school papers which are female liberation group, a study group on the presently coming out (we expect other high school family, a guerrilla theatre group, a research group papers also). We have recently leased downtown looking into the corporate structare of the area space for the large press, a Davidson 233. The and the general economic base, a group researching . space is on the third floor and should be relatively the political structures as they now · exist, an safe from attack. We will do major printing jobs American History study group, a group studying \ there and set up a darkroom to do the offset the secondary education system in the area, a photography for both presses and to do the de­ printing and offset photography skills group, and a veloping and printing from the photography group photography and filmmaking group. There will also of the Free School, a program we propose to start be coordinating meetings and monthly general meet­ this mo nth. We will use this space strictly as a ings. People will sign up for the various groups at printing and photography workshop. The printing the general meeting, but each group will then take facilities are essential to us if we are going to be the responsibility for recruiting additional people able to interpret our actions to the population. into their work as the summer goes on. Some

18 Liberation people, of course, will be in more than one group. small group of already wealthy businessmen who IC­ The hard work of researching power in Spring­ get the benefit, but provides little real encourage­ ld field has already consumed a great deal of the ment for the working person, who is only getting n­ energy of seven or eight of us in MDS. We have another opportunity to spend his money. The !lg begun to analyze how power works in Springfield, question for us is, will the project increase city in and in brief what we have found is the following: revenue and take some of the tax burden off of !le The Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company the average taxpayer. (one of the 50 largest corporations in the country) Ve is practically synonymous with the Springfield !le ruling elite. That is, the company is the richest in Massachusetts Mutual applied and was accepted !g­ the area and the only major corporation with its as a private redevelopment authority to build Bay to home office in Springfield The directors of Mas­ State West under Massachusetts General Law Chap­ 1e sachusetts Mutual interlock with every important ter 121A, with all the "powers, rights, privileges, ve benefits and exemptions" granted by that law and a under Chapter 257 passed especially to give addi­ ~h tional privileges to the project in Springfield. :r- Among the privileges granted under these laws is an exemption for the period of 40 years from all real estate and personal property taxes which would normally be paid to the city and which are paid by all working people in the area. Massachu­ setts Mutual has contracted with the city to pay to an amount in lieu of taxes. The amount is based he on a percentage of income from the project or $10 rk per thousand on a maximum of $50,000,000 valu­ in ation for the life of the contract (whichever of the we two amounts works out to be greater for any . a year). Of course no regular homeowner has a ay pegged assessment (latest estimates made public are 'er that the project will cost $45,000,000 just to ed build) and the normal tax rate is $54.50 per )s­ thousand and rising. The calculations of our re­ by search group are that Massachusetts Mutual will be to paying the city at least $2,000,000 less per year he on the average than it would if it were paying ; a taxes. This figure might become considerably high­ be er if the income formula in the contract fails to [ts keep pace with inflation (the assessment formula !et being fixed). $2,000,000 is approximately 9% of in the total real and personal property taxes collected ps by the city in 1967, and the minimum loss of ill $80,000,000 in uncollected taxes over the life of .p. employer or financial institution in the area and the contract represents a considerable burden to are trustees of the area colleges. which will have to be assumed by the average as This company has undertaken an urban rede­ taxpayer. But beyond this under-payment, it ap­ :ly velopment project in downtown Springfield called pears that Bay State West and certain related a Bay State West. The project will be a 30-story projects will take additional land out of taxation he office building, a 300-room lUXUry hotel, a shop­ in the central city. Most of the business occupying lp ping mall, a new clubhouse for the Colony Club space in Bay State West will be relocating from ea (the social club which the ruling elite of Spring­ other locations in the city where they are pres­ ng field belong to, including the local directors of ently supporting taxable property. The Valley 'ill Massachusetts Mutual), air walkways with addi­ Bank and Trust (two of whose directors are also ng tional shop space over the street to the two major directors of Massachusetts Mutual), for example, a Springfield department stores, and a four-story, will occupy the first 10 floors of the new office . a above-ground parking ramp. None of these things tower, and will abandon the three buildings which so are needed by the population of the area, though they now occupy in the downtown area. Even ~ t­ other critical needs do exist which are not being worse, Massachusetts Mutual did not agree to build at met. It is argued that Bay State West will increase Bay State West until the city agreed to build and ke business and commercial activity in the downtown maintain a civic center designed to attract conven­ .le area. Such an accomplishment is great for the tion business to Springfield. Such a center will ne

June 1969 19 . help to fill the hotel at Bay State West and to give business to other of its facilities (e.g., two liquor • licenses were specially granted to the project). This lIBERATION • civic center will take two city blocks out of taxable development, and it will be funded by a municipal bond issue ($9.3 million), the interest reprints available on which provides tax-free income for the rich. To make matters worse, even the Mayor admits that The Movement: A New Beginning the civic center will run at a deficit perhaps over Staughton Lynd and Greg Calvert $100,000 per year. Two articles based on speeches delivered At the same time that these tax deals have been at the March, 1969, Resistance Conference. developing, the ruling group in Springfield has Reprinted from the May, 1969, i55ue done an extensive publicity job to try to make ·35 cent5 each; 12 copie5 $3.50; 100 for $17.50 people think that the reason for the heavy tax Revolution: Violent and Non-Violent burden on the working man is the rising cost of Regis Debray and Barbara Deming welfare and especially of state Medicaid. The Tax­ Reprinted from the February, 1968, i55ue payers Association in town has been one of the 35 cenn each; 12 copie5 $3.50; 100 for $17.50 leading voices in this attempt to turn working Waves of Resistance people against each other. Members of this associa­ Carl Wittman tion include all of the directors of Massachusetts A discussion of how the movement can Mutual who are local residents. MDS will attempt and ought to reach homosexuals, single to propose a counter-explanation of high taxation parents and others who have not yet based on our research findings. In doing this we made a connection between the diffi­ hope to be able to get through to many people in culties they face and the repressive society they live in. Springfield concerning the existence of a small Reprinted from the November, 1968, i55ue powerful group in the city that is controlling the 10 cenn each; 12 copie5 $1.25; 50 for $2.50 decision-making which affects us all. We will point out that this group is now planning the future of First Street School Springfield, and that they are doing it · in such a George Dennison way as to insure their own benefit while everyone A report on an important experiment else picks up the tab (both financially and in terms in elementary education. of the quality of our lives). We will try to force Reprinted from the July, 1966 iuue Massachusetts Mutual to pay the same taxes as 15 cenn each; 12 copie5 $1 .25; 50 for $3.50 everyone else, and hope to have enough success to Report From Revolutionary China demonstrate to people the power we really have if Dave Dellinger we get together and work together. Reprinted from the January, 1967, i55ue We have not presented here a discussion of our 10 cent5 each; 12 copie5 $1.00; 20 for $1.50 work with Bay State West in any sort of final form. Weare in the process of writing a lengthy SEEDS OF LIBERATION edited by Paul Goodman. A 576-page ha rdcover se lection of the best fro m pamphlet which lays out our research in consider­ LI BERATI ON 's f irst te n years. "This ant ho logy is quite able detail, and we are engaged in further legal ast onishing for its li terary br illiance a nd for the excelle nce research. We will not do extensive work publicly of its reporting."-Edmund Wil son. Published by George on this tactic for a couple of months, and it is Braz ill er. Inc. at $7.50. Our price, $5.50 essential to have successful results from the Free School, and to get a functioning movement work­ LIBERATION /339 lafayette St. / New York 10012 shop before we undertake so large a task. It will Please send me the items marked below. Enclosed is my check not help in overcoming the sense of powerlessness for $_ which people have, unless MDS makes a good showing with this issue and is capable of working I __ THE MOVEMENT: A NEW BEGINNING humanly with the new people who will want to I __ REVOLUTION: VIOLENT AND NON-VIOLENT become involved in the group. __ WAVES OF RESISTANCE • I __ FIRST STREET SCHOOL I _REPORT FROM REVOLUTIONARY CHINA Tom Bell works for the Springfield, Massachu­ I _SEEDS OF LIBERATION setts Area Movement for a Democratic Society. Name ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I Address ...... I

LC i ty ~.~:.:..=t::~.== •• Z I::~:.:.:... :::.:J

20 Liberation

------from Dj"r~ of M"""puu I Moving to Hawaii I didn't mark the equinox for winter when it blows won't mean much to me but aloha and a flower l~i will also mean not much VII to one who needs what is My car can go up Pali nowhere a native product. in high (at 30 miles) II the utmost feat demanded in this little world where you can pause and study the famous view I've come to hate, it is appalling, across the sea, it is the very cliff Adam I used to love where the Oahu warriors were , I will no longer writ~ poetry pushed headlong by Kamehameha my earnest speech with him. the father of his country. J In this war between mankind and the beauty of the world VIII I am a traitor, my loyalty In the great wheeling of heaven from the east does not lie with my kind. the oblong of Orion is rising at 100 'clock, III when I return at midnight he is glittering high and his dog shines over Makapuu These scholars mean no harm, just to learn end of October, there are many brief to palaver with the porpoises, meteorites in the Hawaiian sky but m;y guess is the sagacious animals and the steady trade-winds push the ocean won't talk in jail to the wardens. ashore faintly foaming in the starshine. The language of the ocean knows no syntax for servile needs IX and they cannot lie like Uncle Toms. A white American New Yorker Jew As it is, another has decided to die. talented, I am by birth IV the royal family, and since my lust is democratic and pan-humanist At quis custodiet custodem? inevitably I come on noblesse oblige -who will watch the watchman on his rounds? magnanimous and paternalistic I will, he is a good-looking Samoan, as the foremost foam of the incoming tide it is midnight and he is lonely too. I watch his wandering flashlight sinks in the dry sand without a trace. visit the diJrk offices and peer X behind the bushes, he has nineteen stations At the little public school in Waimanalo to punch before at last he wends this way. my little girl says, they stand up , at strict attention for the Stars and Stripes but for the Bars and Crosses of Hawaii ' they lay their little hands upon their hearts. It's realistic anyway. If there is no idolatrous saluting father doesn't intend to make a fuss.

XI Otters got loose and people were joyous V shouting excitedly 0 freedom! When I read of the races of these islands diJmmit! in the thorny bushes their histories and grim vicissitudes we flush them out or they would perish I and each has prejudices and sore spots in the salty sea far from Malaysia that I can never learn to take into account or be hit by a car. Moimoi let out I here I will never be able to make love ' a shriek of rage when we threw him back for people are not plain. I would be happier and everybody went away depressed. I I trying to make out with the porpoises I if only I could swim better than I do. XII J VI Dead mongoose a dead dog I I got a little car real ch~ap dead boobie on the highway, that clanked and shuddered like a wreck there is no shame in being dead, I but I knew it was the universal joint so many are, it may happen I not a big job, and now my friends to anybody. The atom bomb admire me for a mechanic. of Hiroshima surely shrove I No. I drove when I was poor many of guilt and I am made a car whose universal gave, easier by the dead mongoose. I I know it well. I know it well . - Paul Goodman .~ ion June 1969 21 Farewell To Reform--Revisited Charles Forcey

I t all started with a book, read some twenty years ago, a book already fifteen years old by then, John Chamberlain's Farewell to Reform. Chamberlain's subtitle "The Rise, Life and Decay of the Progressive Mind in America" gave some hint of his purpose. The hint was not enough for a possibly overworked editor of a reprint house in 1965, who blurbed Farewell as "one of the most important conservative interpretations of reform in America." Conservative! Blurb writers are congen­ itally careless, and this one no doubt deprived the once-radical Chamberlain of many thoughtful mod­ ern readers. Yet the editor, to do him justice, may

22 Liberation have known something of Chamberlain's later the like, who had probed endlessly, though rarely career as a Hearst columnist and a canny writer for effectually, most of the problems of concern to the Wall Street Journal. modern American reformers. So, buttressed by Chamberlain's book for the undergraduate who footnotes and all the rest, the paper's conclusions read it in 1947 was the equivalent for today of one promised to be more convincing than Chamber­ by a Harrington or Marcuse. Chamberlain fore­ lain's. But not so different. shadowed, in fact, many of the insights of both. Professors, like Roman generals, like dividing all " .. . Progressivism and Liberalism in this country," things by threes and such was the fate of reform lty wrote Chamberlain in 1932 just as the New Deal in the paper. by was dawning, "are, at the moment, preparing the The three main aims of the reformers ·m. ground for an American Fascism ...." Or: "Politi­ were found to be the improvement of democracy, ::ay cal organization looking towards a socialist Amer­ of capitalism, and of the general welfare. As for me ica .. . is the sine qua non of any alternative to the the first, political reform, the paper could merely ·r a present chaotic order. This does not mean a reli­ have quoted Chamberlain. "The initiative and ref­ in ance upon strict Marxist doctrine . .. . But ... does erendum have produced nothing," he wrote, and ost it not call for a redefinition of the phrases of the the experiences of two further reform eras require in class struggle, a re-application of Marxist dogma to little qualification of the flat statement. "Women's en­ American conditions? If Marx is any good, he can suffrage," continued Chamberlain with equal pre­ ~he stand the tampering." science, " has only added, in direct proportion, to )d­ The book for at least one undergraduate helped Republican and Democratic totals. Direct primaries lay stimulate a life-time's work. Now a middle-aged have proved not even a palliative; they have work­ professor, he recently rather guiltily realized as ed against strong labor and independent party much. The source of the professor's guilt was the organization, which is the only hope of labor and preparation of a scholarly paper to be delivered the consumer in the political field." before a session of the Organization of American Historians' convention in Philadelphia. The paper Chamberlain, writing just as Franklin D. Roose­ bore the title "Inconsequential Consequences: velt was emerging as a national leader, could have Twentieth Century Reform" Chamberlain, the only vague forebodings of what "charisma" would Chamberlain of 1932, had not been re-read by the mean for modern liberalism, a major preoccupation professor for two decades and now was just about of the professor's. Yet Chamberlain's relatively totally forgotten. Yet he became a ghost amidst all firm grasp of the relationship of politics and the scholarly agonies and festivities that marked economics took him to the heart of a President's the preparation and delivery of the paper. Cham­ role as reform leader. His book analyzed at length berlain's shade loomed all the more lugubriously at the relationship of Theodore Roosevelt and Wood­ the convention as the paper was repeatedly ap­ row Wilson to the movements they ostensibly led, plauded by an audience of students and academics. and Chamberlain's conclusions as to consequential Had the professor said anything that Farewell consequences were, like the professor's, negative. hadn't said? Having now re-read Chamberlain, the "If he is a representative of the so-called public-at­ professor's answer is: no, not much. Chamberlain, large," wrote Chamberlain of the reformist Presi­ too, had been much concerned about inconsequen­ dents, "he becomes a politician in favor of either tial consequences. Had the professor anything to one of two things: preserving profits and produc­ suggest that Chamberlain did not in 1932? Well, tive prosperity in favor of some group alignment yes, a little. that has elected him, or of managing the industrial machine for the benefit of everybody." The latter 1:1e professor's paper, after some severe criti­ possibility, for the professor as for Chamberlain, cisms of just about everybody who had worked in would become really possible only if the President the field of twentieth-century reform (including were part "of a radical party, dominated by labor, ... himself), once it defined the problems and the skilled and otherwise, the white collar worker, the paper's approach to them, got down to the solid unemployed, and the poorer farmer." But liberals work of evaluating twnetieth-century reform. Here since the time of F.D.R., said the professor, have the professor had some advantage over Chamber­ "wasted much of their time waiting, as it were, for lain, who had focused of necessity on progres­ Lefty. They thought they had found him first in sivism. The professor had not one, but three major John and then in Robert Kennedy, but the shal­ reform eras to analyze. Beyond the Roosevelt-Wil­ lowness of their dreams in terms of consequential son era, the Hoover-Roosevelt and Kennedy-John­ reform became clear enough in the reformers' son periods gave him a range of data far greater response to Lyndon Johnson. For the first time in than Chamberlain's. He had at his command the the century just at the peak of one of our waves results of the labors of an army of historians, of reform sentiment the liberal reformers had as political scientists, sociologists, statisticians, and President a man who both wanted and knew how

'on June 1969 23 The wars of the twentieth century are the real explanation of the survival of A merican capitalism to get things done. Johnson did get things done, rate in the first decade after the great 1954 obtaining from Congress a number of measures for desegregation decision. Ten years after the Court's poverty, education, civil rights, and conservation ruling only one per cent of black school children that promised consequences far greater than from in the South attended integrated schools. One per the work of any previous President. And most of cent in ten years, well .... Such a rate of improve­ the liberals, long before the issue of Vietnam ment suggested final success for desegregation in arose, loathed him. Their nostaligic memory of the year 2954. Franklin Roosevelt confirmed their preference for As for economic reform, the record was much style over performance." the same. The professor did not have to belabor Where, in the political realm, the professor evidence to show that "trusts" were far more part differed slightly from Chamberlain was on the of American life today than when Theodore inconsequentiality of the progressives' direct elec­ Roosevelt first pretended to take on Mr. Dooley's tion of Senators. Chamberlain, writing at a time "heejous monsthers." Even with his more limited when Huey Long and others were beginning to data, Chamberlain got right to the point when alarm some men, saw the main difference in the he noted how little difference it had made when Senate after 1913 to be "one of demagoguery." the country moved from Roosevelt's Square Deal The professor, with some belief in the social utility to Wilson's New Freedom. "The Morgan interests of demagogues, found no difference at all. The might have been rebuffed and affronted ... ," "millionaire's club" that aroused progressives to wrote Chamberlain, "but the Morgan crowd merely denounce "the shame of the Senate" was, research gave way to Bernard Baruch and the Kuhn, Loeb has shown, even more a "millionaire's club" in the crowd. It was from one banker group to another, 1960's than in the heady, uninhibited days of as it always must be when money is needed to Hanna and McKinley. The professor went beyond provide a leverage in politics." With one point, Chamberlain to suggest that the political reforms where the radical Chamberlain had actually been of the progressives, together with such New Deal hopeful as he bade farewell to reform, the pro­ ones as the Hatch Act, had one cumulative conse­ fessor could not agree. Chamberlain had seen great quence that was not inconsequential. The reforms promise in the progressive income tax as an instru­ had combined to make political activity more ment for the redistribution of wealth. Yet his expensive (an effect multiplied geometrically by argument became simplistic when he suggested that the giant costs of radio, television, and other mass "an income of six per cent may be shaved to the media) while at the same time reducing the inde­ vanishing point by a five per cent system of pendent resources of politicians in the spoils sys­ taxation. . . ." The professor for his part had the tem. The most consequential result of the progres­ studies of Lampman and Kolko in the Fifties to sives' political reforms was a domination of Ameri­ show that neither the income tax nor anything else can politics by the "plutocracy" far beyond the had changed the preponderance of the very rich dreams of Marcus Alonzo Hanna. that had existed in 1900. The professor also questioned the success of liberals in defending and expanding liberty, an aspiration at the very core of their libertarian Wth respect to the central issue of the general creed. John Chamberlain, who had only the Red welfare, the liberals' record had proved far worse Scare after World War I to analyze, passed over the than anticipated. Here, oddly enough, there was question lightly. The professor, with his longer little real concern in Farewell, despite the despera­ time span, believed that there had not been merely tion of the poverty of at least two-thirds of temporary periods of post-war hysteria but a long­ Americans by 1932. Perhaps that was it. Chamber­ term erosion of American freedoms. He could cite lain could not make much of poverty in the midst instances concerning immigrants, aliens, and other of poverty. The professor could do better with minorities, as well as free speech, sedition, loyalty, figures to suggest the grim irony of extreme and criminal law. While acknowledging the part poverty in the midst of extreme plenty. "The reformers' test cases had played in the recent United States each year with but one-seventeenth liberal trend of the Supreme Court, the paper of all the world's total population consumes about questioned the rate of implementation of the one-half of the world's annual goods and services. historic decisions. The professor found typical the Yet amidst such great wealth at least one-fifth of

24 Liberation our people-to accept President Johnson's conser­ the main reason for the failure of the social vative estimate of a few years ago-live in poverty. democratic alternatives to liberal reform of which One-fifth means forth million Americans who have Chamberlain dreamed in 1932. And rather para­ not the wherewithal for a decent life for them­ doxically, the wars largely explained why the n selves and their children." United States had not been swept by the fascism For all the similarities, there was one major that Chamberlain dreaded in 1932. point of difference between the professor's fare­ "The wars of the twentieth century," wrote the 54 well to reform of 1969 and that of Chamberlain professor in his paper, "are the real explanation of t's thirty-seven years earlier. Chamberlain then, under­ the survival of capitalism in the United States. The m standably from his perspective, had seen the fate relationship between these wars and our periods of er of American capitalism to be inevitably one of prosperity reduce to complete inconsequence all 'e· "eventual constriction." He conceded that prosper­ the tinkering that has been done with our econ­ in ity might return and capitalism survive, that there omy. World War I came in Europe in 1914 just as might be "new markets to be uncovered, new the American economy began to sag into the ~h wants to be exploited, new famines to create· new morass of a cyclically overdue depression. The Dr farmer-purchasing power, even new sources of surpluses built up before and during our participa­ rt gold." But he doubted it. He believed that Russia tion in the war made possible our break-through re as a great productive power, immune to the in­ during the twenties to a mass consumption econ­ "s stabilities and extortions of capitalism would mas­ omy, much sooner than was true for any other ld sively undersell the capitalistic countries in the industrial nation. World War II in tum did what all m world market. The capitalists would be forced to the relief, recovery, and reform efforts of the New m cut back, with chaos following constriction. In this Deal had failed to do; it restored the country to al respect the professor found Chamberlain not only prosperity. And then, as the country moved ts a poor prophet, but a poor analyst of the data at through the recessions of the late Forties came ," his command. Chamberlain had failed to see and Korea, and for those of the late Fifties the giant ly forsee the dependence of American capitalism for defense budgets of Kennedy and Johnson. War, in !b its survival upon the wars of the twentieth cen­ sum, has again and again saved our reformers from r, tury. facing up to the inherent contradictions of capital­ ;0 As a corollary to his argument about capitalism ism, from suffering from the consequences of their t, and war, the professor argued that relationship was own inconsequential consequences." !n )­ At this point the professor was willing to throw it scholarly caution to the winds and risk a predic­ l­ tion as sweeping as any Chamberlain had hazarded is in 1932 about the future of capitalism, liberalism, It fascism, or socialism. "There is a possibility," the le professor wrote, "that now with Vietnam the )f process [of capitalism bolstered by war and mili­ le tarism] has come to an end. The Vietnam crisis o came not when the economy was lagging but when ie it was already much overheated. So today all the h counter-cyclical weapons past reform has be­ queathed to us are contending with what may well be an uncontrollable boom. The basic fact is that an uncontrolled capitalistic economy responds to massive psychological pressures no amount of tink­ il :e ering can control. Though a historian risks predic­ l- tions among his peers only at his peril, I think we lS i- may see in the next year or so how inconse­ If quential all the reforms of our economy actually r- have been. A war of sufficient magnitude to bring it us out of the next depression will be, if you will forgive the grisly irony, the final war to end all h wars." e e So there it was. The professor's paper was one h of several dozen at the convention wherein scho­ t lars were supposed to report on the present status i. of research in a field of American history. The f rising challenge of his conclusion concealed, as probably had been true for Chamberlain in 1932, n June 1969 25 the near despair of his own heart. "In the face of school days, Larry Gara, who had exceeded by facts like these," ran the peroration, "what can a several hundreds the one night the professor had historian of twentieth century reform say to the ever spent in jail as a consequence of his convic­ more thoughtful and intelligent among his students tions. Gara apologized for having missed the paper. who reject most of the underlying assumptions of He had been busy at the time taking part in a American liberalism? We hear much talk about the demonstration across the street from the conven­ failure of the older and younger generations to tion hotel. Gara's parting shot as the professor understand one another. But do we of the older moved on was jocular but telling: "You were in generation, professional men devoted to the pursuit there talking about the revolution while I was of knowledge, understand the world that we and across the street making it." our elders are bequeathing to the young? Perhaps a Later the professor wished that time and cir­ few of us, with qur universities blowing up around cumstances had allowed explaining to Gara that if us, will credit the young with a true sense of the anything he had been speaking against "the revolu­ hollowness of much that they have learned from tion." He had a sneaking fondness for an old us. Perhaps a few of us also can develop a saving phrase among American radicals, "revolutionary impatience with such scholarly games as conflict or change," a phrase that went back at least to consensus, continuity or discontinuity (the major Eugene Victor Debs and can be found today even preoccupations of most historians of twentieth in the pronouncements of S.D.S. As is often true century reform). We can hope that more than a for propaganda, much of the power of the phrase few will regain the sense of commitment that lay in its ambiguity. It could mean change brought enlivened the works of those earlier progressive about by revolutionary, that is, violent, means. Or historians it is now so fashionable to deride. For it could mean more gradual change of revolu­ better or worse we no longer live in a world that tionary, that is, massive, dimensions. The professor will tolerate the inconsequential consequences of had spoken for the latter "revolution." American liberalism." Professor Forcey, who teaches at the State Soon after the session the professor ran across University of New York, Binghamton, is the at the convention an old friend from graduate author of The Crossroads of Liberalism.

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£

on June 1969 27 A Guide to the Grand Jury Cathy Boudin and Brian Glick

It wasn't the Justice Department or ~e Grand Jury. Part of the Bill of the FBI or Daley, Johnson or Nixon Rights. A bulwark of American justice, who decided that leaders of last sum­ supposedly serving three vital func­ mer 's Chicago actions should be tried tions. for a federal crime. Not technically, As the "conscience of the com­ that is. munity," the Grand Jury is supposed Officially a grand jury did it. Other to protect people against unfair prose­ grand juries have indicted black mili­ cution. Until it finds that the govern­ tants and student activists. Many of us ment has substantial evidence, no per­ who do not face criminal charges have son can be tried for a serious crime in already been called as grand jury wit­ federal court or in the courts of nearly nesses or will be soon. We 're learning half the states. (In the other states and first hand how, in a society divided for non-serious crimes, a judge makes along lines of race and class, legal tills decision in a preliminary hearing.) institutions are used by the powerful As "the people's big stick," the to perpetuate the status quo. Grand Jury is supposed to investigate The purpose of legal repression is to official misconduct. In many states it intimidate and isolate us from our can issue a muckraking report even base. Unless we are careful, repression when it decides no crime has been can divert needed energy into defense committed. groups for raising money and publi­ Finally, the Grand Jury supposedly cizing repression. provides opportunities for citizen parti-

28 Liberation cipation in government. To the presi­ Twenty-six company presidents, 31 choose between preliminary hearing I dent of New York's Grand Jury As­ bankers, 5 utility executives, and a and grand jury. If the defendant re­ sociation it represents democracy in number of realtors and other business quests a preliminary hearing, the prose­ action: officials were among the 261 jurors cutor can simply stall the case until he "Effective government can func­ selected by the same method in San obtains a grand jury indictment. tion-and our conununities can Francisco from 1950 to 1968. Non­ The New York D.A. used this tactic maintain their vitality-only so long whites, over one-third the San Fran­ to avoid repeating his Columbia fiasco , as the .ordinary citizen can and will cisco population, provided only five when CCNY students were arrested participate in determining the cir­ percent of the jurors. this fall for giving sanctuary to an k cumstances under which he lives his The New York County grand juries AWOL soldier. The< students were life. Even before our country which have indicted Columbia strike booked, charged and bailed out in the achieved its independence, grand leaders and Black Panthers are not ordinary manner. They then planned juries were a means by which much different. According to an ana­ collectively for the expected next ordinary citizens have had a direct lysis prepared for a court challenge, stage, the preliminary hearing, at which and powerful voice in the conduct the New York grand jurors who sat in many of them were going to represent of conununity affairs." 1964 were 1.65 percent black, .003 themselves so they could more effec­ A close look at what the grand jury percent Puerto Rican, and slightly over tively present their political views. To really is and does illustrates this 1 percent blue collar. None were under the students' surprise, and the surprise general principle. Those who now ac­ 35. Most lived in census districts with of their lawyers, the D.A. presented tively oppose the status quo-youth, a median income of over $10,000 per grand jury findings on the basis of blacks, poor people- are excluded from year. which the judges denied requests for jury duty. Moreover, the Grand Jury These jurors were chosen from preliminary hearing and inunediately does not itself exercise significant names supplied by judges and other set dates for trial. power ; it is controlled by the prose­ grand jurors, plus anyone who applied Finally, the prosecutor can use the cutor (D.A., U.S. Attorney), who uses in person at the jury clerk office. Over grand jury to force potential defen­ it as a weapon against movements for nine-tenths of the panel from which dants' friends and comrades to talk change. New York juries are now picked quali­ with him and turn books and papers fied at a time when a grand juror was over to him before trial, unless they ' ~e Grand Jury originated in the required by law to own at least $250 assert their Fifth Amendment privilege I 13th century in England as a corps of worth of property. The chief jury clerk against self-incrimination. He can use I knights assigned to help the Crown admits that his office still rejects any the transcript of the grand jury pro­ identify and prosecute criminals. In the applicant under 35 unless he is recom­ ceedings at trial to contradict a defense United States today many Grand Juries mended by a judge. The clerks also witness who changes his story. He may I still consist mainly of "blue ribbon" exclude anyone on welfare, anyone be able to trap a witness into lying to aristocrats. who was ever declared bankrupt, and the grand jury and then convict the I From 193843 the federal court for anyone who has a lien or judgement wi tness of perjury, even if he doesn't I the southern district of New York outstanding against him. As the New have enough evidence to try the wit­ (Manhattan, Bronx, and Westchester) York Times recently put it, "credit ness or anyone else for a substantial lof drew jurors primarily from Who's Who checks screen out fly-by-nights and un­ crime. li ce, in New York, Who's Who in Engineer­ reliables. " The prosecutor has these powers lflC- ing, the Social Register, the alumni Recent civil rights legislation gives only through the grand jury. Ordinarily directories of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, federal defendants the right to a jury we are no more required to talk with a om­ and Dartmouth, and Poor's Register of hearings to delay almost all trials until D.A. or U.S. Attorney than with the lsed Executives and Directory of Directors. the fall , when a new University admin­ FBI or the police. We can refuse to ose­ Many of these people stayed on the istration withdrew most of the charges talk with any of them without fear of ern­ jury panel for years and helped indict against the students. being jailed for contempt of court. (A per­ the Rosenbergs and many Smith Act Since the grand jury serves the same person who lies to such officials can, .e in defendants. The federal court agreed procedural functions as the preliminary however, be prosecuted for willful mis­ ady that this procedure systematically ex­ hearing-both are supposed to protect representation. In the Fifties political and cluded black people and workers. But against unjust prosecution and both in activists frequently were trapped into akes it still upheld the procedure as an fact rubber stamp the D.A.-the defen­ petty lies and then were forced to .ng.) efficient way to find jurors who were dant is not entitled to both a prelimin­ inform or spend several years in jail.) the properly "qualified." ary hearing and a grand jury. In federal gate Today many states use only slightly court and in states which use grand III :s it more subtle methods to select similarly juries, a person cannot be required to ~ven elite juries. The grand juries which stand trial for a serious crime (felony) ~e power to compel testimony leen indicted Huey Newton and the Oak­ until he is indicted by a grand jury. through the grand jury gives the D.A. land Seven, for instance, were picked But in trials for the minor crimes even more than significant technical edly only from names provided by the Ala­ (misdemeanors) that most people are advantages. It provides him, and the larti- meda County Superior Court judges. charged with, the prosecutor can government generally, with a powerful lion June 1969 29 weapon for terrorizing people active in protector of justice that it pretends to downtown redevelopment and gIvmg movements for social change. be. "special recognition" to the police de­ The grand jury meets in secret and Activist recent success in talking be­ partment's tactical squad. is surrounded by an aura of mystery. fore HUAC in no way indicates that The unrepresentative make-up of Not only are the prospective defen­ the same approach would be appro­ the Grand Jury combines with the dants, the media and the public ex­ priate in responding to the grand jury. tructure of the legal process to ensure cluded, but a witness cannot even HUAC could be made to look ridicu­ that the Grand Jury will rubber stamp bring his own lawyer into the grand lous and its hearings could be used as a the prosecutor, not protect the people jury room. His attorney can be in the political platform because, unlike the against unjust prosecution. Most grand hall, and the witness can be excused to grand jury, HUAC meets in public, juries are mystified by the techni­ consult him, but this is a far cry from with the media present. Moreover, calities of the law. They serve only one having counsel at his side throughout HUAC can use the information it month every two or three years. They the proceeding. The D.A. may well be gathers only to recommend legislation have no staff except for the prose­ able to pressure him into answering and publish propoganda; it has no cutor's office, and they are not al­ questions he shouldn't answer and to power to issue indictments and use lowed to hire outside experts. The embarrass him so he will leave to talk "selected at random from a fair cross­ prosecutor manages the proceedings, with his lawyer only rarely. section of the community." The new bringing documents and witnesses, The grand jury proceeding is the law also prohibits exclusion from fed­ leading the question and drafting the only situation in which a person can eral grand juries "on account of race, indictment which the jury approves. legally be forced to talk to the author­ color, religion, sex, national origin or If one grand jury refuses to issue an ities entirely alone, with no lawyer or economic status." indictment the prosecutor is free to friends to advise and support him. The The real effect of this reform is call another jury and yet another until prospect of such an experience can only to open the federal Grand Jury to he persuades one to go along. If a terrify even the strongest and most the salaried middle classes. Jurors' grand jury decides to indict someone experienced of activists. The govern­ names are drawn only from lists of he doesn't want convicted, the prose­ ment tries to intensify these fears by voters or persons registered to vote, cutor can always find a way to let the calling witnesses separately, or only a despite the well-known fact that dis­ case die. In some states he has the couple at a time, and encouraging proportionately large numbers of legal right to dismiss any indictment. them to respond as isolated individuals. blacks, Puerto Ricans and poor people In the others he can neglect to proceed Most of the people called before the take no part in the electoral process. on the case, accept a guilty plea to a Chicago federal grand jury quietly ap­ Jury clerks continue to exercise vase trivial charge, or try the case in a way peared and talked. By acting indivi­ discretion-remaining free, for example, which allows the defendant to win dualistically they reinforced the sense to treat misspelling on the required easily. of loneliness and terror which the written application as proof of disqual­ grand jury evokes. They failed to draw ifying illiteracy. Finally, the clerks ex­ A defendant can gain nothing from on our one source of psychic and cuse from jury duty any wage earner grand jury proceedings. He and his political strength in confronting the who claims financial hardship because attorney are excluded from the jury enemy on his turf, the power of collec­ he might lose his job as a result of a room. They cannot cross-examine the tive action. month's absence or because he can't states' witnesses or object to questions Some of those who talked in Chi­ support his family on the juror's fee. cago thought they could persuade the (Most states pay only a few dollars a The 5 Beekman St. office of the jurors to refuse to issue indictments, day . The new law raised the federal fee War Resisters League in New York an unlikely prospect given who sits on from $10 to $ 20 per day, still only was virtually in ruins when staffers grand juries and the fact that the deci­ half what the U.S. Labor Department arrived for work on May 10. They sion to indict had already been made estimates that a city family of four found debris covering the floor, files politically and was only being imple­ needs to live decently.) dumped and machinery smashed. mented through the grand jury. Others Damages totaled $5000. believed they could outsmart the U.S. II Most important was the theft of Attorney, which seems equally unlikely the membership file, leaving WRl since we never know just what the Grand juries are made up mainly of without a mailing list. All member­ prosecutor's looking for and when white, middle-aged and elderly repre­ ship cards and addressograph stencils seemingly harmless information will sentatives of the propertied and mana­ were stolen. help him. Since the grand jury meets gerial classes. It's hardly surprising that The WRl must reconstruct its in secret and no one can be certain in their watchdog function such grand mailing list-some 10,000 names­ precisely what any witness said, testi­ juries protect their own economic and from scratch. Liberation readers who fying cannot help but spread suspicion political power and their social privi­ were on that list, or who want to be and distrust within the movement. Co­ lege . The reports issued by San Fran­ on it, can write to WR l at its new operation with the grand jury also rein­ ciso grand juries during 1968 con­ location: 339 Lafayette St., New forces its legitimacy and leads even demned "welfare chiselers" and drug York, N.Y. 10012. New WRl phone more people to believe it is in fact the use, while supporting freeways and number is (212) 228-0450.

30 Liberation iving put to friendly witnesses. In federal liminary hearings to gain time before macy of their power. As with the courts and in many states the de­ they have to stand trial. Attorneys for draft, the alternative is total non­ l de- fendant cannot appear before the the Columbia strikers used preliminary cooperation leading to imprisonment. grand jury even if he does discover testimony before it as the basis of (First Amendment free speech offers I of that it is discussing him, and in other criminal prosecution (except for per­ no protection, as a number of people the states he can testify (and then leave) jury or contempt). on the left discovered when they were lsure only if he agrees to allow the prosecu­ Strategy before a grand jury must jailed for contempt in the Fifties.) amp tor to use anything he says against him also be distinguished from strategy be­ The criteria for choosing between ople at trial. Although the prosecutor auto­ fore a trial jury. Trial juries are rela­ the two possible responses are essen­ rand matically receives the transcript of the tively more representative than grand tially the same as those applicable to :hni­ jury proceedings, the defendant can see juries (though not made up of the Selective Service. What would be the one a copy only under special circum­ "peers" of most defendants); the de­ likely political impact of total refusal, 'hey t stances and with a court order. fendant generally has power to exclude given the witness's status and consti­ :ose- Though the grand jury is useless to obviously biased jurors, plus some tuency? To what extent does the al­ defendants, it can help the prosecutor others. While the grand jury hears only movement seem ready and able to or­ The in several important ways. When press­ witnesses' answers to the prosecutor's ganize around a refusal? How would ings, questions and then confers priv~tely sses, ed to bring to trial someone he wants the witness use his liberty if he to protect, the prosecutor can have the with the prosecutor, the trial jury avoided jail? Can his use of the Fifth the case killed by a grand jury of "or­ hears the defendant's full case-as he Amendment be explained publicly in a dinary citizens:" The Brooklyn D.A. wants it presented-and hears the pros­ way which avoids (as the left did not e an used this tactic with great success ecutor only in open court. in the Fifties) the appearance of : to when a police officer shot a black defensiveness and of admitting having mill people who testified in Chicago done something wrong? [f a youth in 1965. The grand jury issued a ~e report exonerating the cop. D.A. almost certainly could have refused to The decision almost certainly will ,one Koota said there was nothing more he talk without risking jail. The last three vary with time, place and person. ose­ could do, and the courts rejected witnesses, who planned their responses Whatever response is chosen, it is cri­ the CORE's petition demanding further in­ with other movement activists and law­ tically important that it be determined the .ent. quiry. Precisely the same technique is yers, were excused by the U.S. Attor­ collectively, on political as well as per­ :eed now being used to protect the off-duty ney after they pleaded the Fifth sonal grounds, and that it be joined to a cops who attacked Black Panthers near Amendment privilege against self­ with a political offensive against the way a Brooklyn courtroom. incrimination. Grand Jury and the oppressive legal The U.S. Constitution prohibits win Through a grand jury report-one system of which it is a part. which names names-a D .A. may be federal or state officials from forcing The witnesses who took the Fifth in able to prosecute in the mass media anyone to give any information which Chicago first moved in a highly publi­ might tend to incriminate him. Al­ rom opponents against whom he could cized court session to have their sub­ prove no case in court. Black militants though technically there is no consti­ his poenas dismissed. They used the court jury in Cleveland were harassed in just this tutional right to refuse to give informa­ hearing and press conferences to attack tion because it might incriminate some­ the way after that city's most recent the grand jury's composition and pro­ "riots." In the early Fifties a New one else, in practice the courts are ions cedures, as well as the prosecutor's York grand jury report accused offi­ forced to accept almost all claims of breach of secrecy and the bias of the :he cials of the United Electrical Workers possible self-incrimination, since no judge who convened the jury. Other Irk union of membership in the Com­ one can prove his testimony might methods of attack might range from ers munist Party, which was not a crime incriminate another person without in leaflets and guerrilla theater to provid­ ley even then, and recommended that the the process incriminating himself. ing sanctuary for a witness who re­ les National Labor Relations Board decer­ The only legal obstacle to using the fused to appear or physically invaded !d. tify the union. Fifth Amendment is the grand jury's the grand jury room. The prosecutor's third possible use power in some courts and in some We need to attack the legal system of of the grand jury is to deprive a defen­ kinds of cases, to offer a witness im­ of the United States-courts, grand ~L dant of the tactical advantages of a munity from prosecution on the basis juries, legislative committees, the ide­ er· judicial preliminary hearing. At a pre­ of his testimony and then to have him ology itself-just as we attacked its :ils liminary hearing a defendant need not held in contempt if he still refuses to fraternal institutions, the university take the stand or present any part of talk. The Chicago witnesses who took and the Selective Service System. its his case. The defendant's attorney can the Fifth were not offered immunity, • 5- discover the state's case and cross­ possibly because federal immunity laws

~o examine its witnesses; if the witnesses may not cover the supposed crimes be change their testimony at trial, he can which the grand jury was investigating. !W quote from the transcript of the hear­ Taking the Fifth, like accepting a IW ing to cast doubt on their honesty. deferment to the draft, still involves ne Since court dockets are almost always some cooperation with the authorities crowded, defendants can use pre- and still appears to accept the legiti- ion June 1969 31 state and community colleges, trade Greg Calvert's address to the Resis­ schools, and high schools. (2) Since tance Conference, printed in the May many young people in communities, issue of Liberation under the title, "A factories, and the military have an in­ Left-Wing Alternative," was unfor­ terest in joining with the New Left iIi. tunate, to say the least. At a time an anti-capitalist struggle, there is a when, more than ever, there is a need need to expand the New Left beyond for clarity and honest debate within its campus base into a revolutionary the New Left, his speech provided youth movement, with a particular neither, and went a long way in en­ focus on working-class youth who are couraging the phony dichotomies and not students. misreadings of history he attacked so There is nothing in those two con­ bitterly. cerns that says students are "illegiti­ No one can deny that SDS is in mate." Rather, the understanding is need of both criticism and self-criti­ that a student movement in isolation is cism. But most of Calvert's attacks fall not enough, that the l'1eW Left needs a far short of their mark, while others base of support and alliances beyond are directed at those aspects of the the campus. That this is true should be organization which are basically sound: quite clear to everyone. the emphasis on struggling against To say that SDS has denied "that white supremacy and other forms of new working class people have legiti­ opportunism. macy as revolutionary strata" is a sec­ To start with some of Calvert's re­ ond mistake, although more ambig­ marks on SDS and the student move­ uous. What most of SDS has done has ment: been to reject two notions: (1) that "What's going on in SDS is that, the "new working class" stratum will having denied that students have be the vanguard of class struggle in the legitimacy as a strata, or that new­ country and (2) that the term "new working class people have legitimacy working class" is at all useful as a as revolutionary strata, we revert to category, since it refers not to a dis­ the old Leninist formulations which tinct social class but rather to a highly say that the task of the petit-bour­ skilled technical stratum of the work­ geois intelligentsia is to form a van­ ing class. Insofar as "new working guard party which will relate to the class" are part of the working class, proletarian struggle of the factory then no one has denied that they worker." certainly have revolutionary potential. There are at least three errors or Calvert's third error is accusing SDS distortions in that one sentence. First of reverting " ... to the old Leninist of all, almost no one in SDS has formulations which say the task of the Greg Calvert denied that students have "legi timacy petit-bourgeois intelligentsia is to form as a strata." Most see students as a a vanguard party.... " First, this is not and the multi-class stratum, reflecting all the an accurate description of Lenin's for­ class divisions within the general so­ mulation. Second, almost no one in ciety, but understand that the majority SDS (with the exception of the New Politics of Guilt: of students come from working-class York-Philadelphia Labor Committees) backgrounds and will return to the either see themselves as or set tasks for earl davidson working class after they leave the col­ the petit-bourgeois intelligentsia. And lege campus. Far from "denying legiti­ third, what's wrong with working to macy," there is general agreement in build a vanguard party? SDS that this stratum has a progressive Calvert says he thinks " ... there is if not revolutionary role to play in the an alternative to the question of making of a socialist revolution. party ... " in the popular socialist and What Calvert either misunderstands anarchist movements of the past. But or is distorting on this point are two he doesn't spell it out or even give a concerns SDS has had in the past year: substantial idea of what he means. He (1) Since the radical student movement does say "I will not sacrifice myself to has been concentrated in the "elite" be part of that dehumanizing vanguard colleges and universities, there is a for my children in another day." Even need to focus organizing efforts on the most staunch Leninists in SDS are

32 Liberation ,e against a "dehumanizing" vanguard. vlrusm is a problem inside of us. that separates revolutionary practice :e Are all vanguard parties dehumanizing? But I wish to insist that the only from reformist and reactionary practice ;, And if so, why? To say the least, the way we can finally fight against in this country. I­ question is begged. racism effectively is to be fighting How can the "guilty liberal" argu­ n Calvert describes how the situation our battles for our own liberation, ment be confronted? When white a of students today is quite different in alliance with black people fight­ Americans first grasp the totality of d than in Lenin's time, which is unques­ ing their struggle for their own li­ the oppression suffered by black y tionably true. In 1967 SDS's under­ beration. " people in this country, they are usually Ir standing of the multiversity's role in moved by a sense of human com­ e job-training and manpower channel- While racism certainly is deeply passion. One would also hope that ling .. . rooted in the character structure of they would be enraged at the perpetra- \­ almost every white man and woman in i­ " ... gave us the possibility of a this country, to say that the struggle IS perspective that said students and against it "doesn't have any outside to IS post-students fighting around the conditions of their own lives are it" and is only "a problem inside of a legitimately revolutionary strata us" is incredibly blind. It ignores com­ d pletely the wide spread day-to-day Ie where they are at, and that that can be their great contribution to a lar­ practice of white supremacy and male supremacy, where millions of whites It ger movement, which must include other sectors of the population- the oppress blacks, and where almost every i- blue-collar workers and the poor." man is engaged in the oppression of almost every woman. Furthermore, g­ I But even then SDS saw certain strate­ that practice- the source of misery of / IS gic problems with a student movement most of the world's peoples-has been \ It viewed in this light, problems Calvert obj

34 Liberation

L-~ ______~ ______------and ac­ rhis bel­ our wo, rac- A Response : greg eIIlvert ions the lart, Dear Carl, couldn't have avoided SDS since I per­ I suggested that we look at the um­ Having spent two years working ceive a clear political direction which processes and forms of revolution from Ived closely with you and growing poli­ runs contrary to the original convic­ below, of power which is built on a ng's tically with you through the same ex­ tions and style of the New Left. I am popular basis and which represents the the periences, I fmd it strange responding sorry to learn that you found the embryonic institutions of a new decen­ the to your criticisms through the pages of substance of the talk "unfortunate" tralized socialist society. Such a notion und a magazine. However, perhaps it is and that you feel it "only makes mat­ implies the abandonment of the di­ also good that we discuss differences pub­ ters worse." If you are right in your chotomies of ''vanguard'' and "mass" ents licly. Too often, I fear, the important estimation, then my efforts at trying and the authoritarian structures of cen­ ,ion political debates of the last two years to search for alternatives has been a tralist organization. It implies that the ; in have not been talked out in a way miserable failure . changing of human lives, the emer­ fen- which increased the whole movement's Out of the experiences and thinking gence of the New Man, are integral understanding of what the issues were of the last nine months, I have come parts of the revolutionary process. It 'ong about. to the conclusion that Leninism is an affirms that the development of new that My intention in giving the talk at incorrect direction for the New Left human rela tionships as well as the nce, the Resistance Conference was to ad­ and that our task must be to begin to structures which sustain them are what sm" dress the central question which had find new models of revolutionary prac­ the revolution is. The events which . he been haunting me and others I have tice and organization which correspond lead to the immediate disappearance of

'tion June 1969 35 the dominant order. always known, black people cannot do Finally, I disagree strongly with How then do questions like "guilt" that alone within an advanced indus­ your analysis of what should happen and the problem of racism fit in. First, trial society where their revolution can to self-hatred. You argue that the it is guilt which sustains the repressive only be successful if a socialist revolu­ "problem is one of turning self-hatred controls and taboos of the unfree so­ tion is made by all the oppressed into its opposite: hatred of the oppres­ ciety as an internalized mechanism people of this country. That means sor." That argument once made sense which divides the individual from him­ that whites too must be in the process to me though I must admit I was self. makes him fear his real feelings of freeing themselves from guilt and always plagued with self-doubt. Now I self-hatred and must engage in building believe that it is wrong. "Hatred of the bases and structures of counter-power. oppressor" is not the "opposite" of For the moment, the major force "self-hatred": it is Simply its corollary. among whites for challenging power is The opposite of self-hatred is self­ the student movement. The frustrating affIrmation, self-reliance, outgoingness, and agonizing problem for both blacks strength, courage, and love. It is the and white students is that these two self freed to challenge authority, in­ groups alone cannot challenge power justice, and exploitation because it successfully and that more allies must does not need those structures to feed be found among the white working itself any more. It is the self which majority of the population. Even now, needs community and self-determina­ socialists are a long way from being a tion because it cannot bear isolated majority force in either the schools or existence and authoritarian controls. It the black community. It may be a long is the self which can think rationally time before events and active organiz­ about a socialist alternative to the ing create a base for revolution among present insanity of the capitalist order the majority of the population. Until because it can rationally assess real such a time as such a base develops, human needs inside itself. It is the self bourgeois control will remain, and, in which rejects the aspirations and the the meantime those who believe they behavior of "the Man" -not because it can make a revolution happen by en­ hates him-but because it has radically gaging in armed combat with the po­ different aspirations and a radically dif­ lice apparatus of the state run the very ferent sense of Manhood. serious risk of being wiped out or of Carl, you suggest that I spell out further isolating themselves from p0- further some of the points I made. I tential bases. I know of no place in the have tried here to indicate the direc­ and instincts, and thus prevents him society where we have established the tion of some of my notions. On the from envisioning or acting on alterna­ kind of structures of counter-power question of l..eninism and Stalinism I tives to established behavior. It makes which would enable us to challenge feel very strongly that we are badly in us hate our real selves- our needing, existing structures- in most cases we need of a debate. l..et me propose that giving, energetic, loving, polymor­ cannot even defend ourselves and that such a debate begin to take place, ·here phously perverse animal selves. It precisely because we have allowed ro­ in the pages of Liberation. I will un­ makes us act irrationally, against our mantic militancy to replace careful dertake to pull together the critique real needs and interests. Only through political organizing. which I have been developing. I would a process of self-affIrmation can we appreciate it if you, and others, would overcome guilt and begin to act in As part of the process in which we reply or present alternative viewpoints. those new ways which establish an have become engaged but which may I really do feel that something like this alternative mode of being and begin to only be in its earliest infancy, we must is urgently needed. initiate a revolutionary process. develop links and ties of solidarity Agreed? between different groups and move­ Greg Calvert ~e relationship to racism? Racism ments. However, the greatest mistake is • exists inside us as part of that self­ to subordinate the needs and develop­ hatred structures of society outside our ment of one group to another. Beating individual characters. The black people white students over the head with the of America are in the process of free­ issue of racism does not create a strong Greg Calvert, former national secre­ ing themselves from the self-hatred student movement. It turns people off tary of SDS, lives in Austin, Texas. which white society has created in and isolates radicals. In the end it does them. They are also in the process of not provide blacks or anyone else trying to build bases of power which with strong allies determined to play will enable them to challenge success­ their role in the struggle for their fully the dominant structures of bour­ liberation and the creation of a new geois control. But, as you and I have world.

36 Liberationj with lappen It the hatred Co.,I.,lunieations: tppres- sense I was A Response to Jim Matles of the U.E. : paul.ooth Now I of the :e" of ollary. Dear Friends, to turn the tables around. An insurgent : self- candidate might promise the moon (some 19ness, I'm very glad you printed the promise conflicting moons to black and is the interview with James Matles. willte workers), but people vote for rum in­ :y, [Liberation, March-April] The because they want to say "no" to the it lse rediscovery of class relations by the left incumbents, not because of ills o feed as the basic source of our problems and platform. which grievances is now leading to discussion of rmina­ strategies of class conflict- anything The Detroit black workers olated that informs that discussion is valuable. movements (such as DRUM) are reputed 'ols. It In particular it is important to discuss to be different from the onally American trade unionism, not only here-one-day-gone-the-next caucuses to J the because "unions are there", but because willch. Matles referred. By reputation order among working-class institutions they they have a socialist-cum-black power s real are uniquely situated at the major point ideology and rank-and-file base Ie self of class conflict- the workplace. The organized on a principle that sounds like ld the working-class counterparts of student "dual power". This is a far cry from luse it militants learn their lessons at the base being a kind of pluralistic veto to the lically of production, and the union is their leadership in the "vote the rascals out" ly dif- first point of departure. form. The key question about insurgencies and caucuses is whether U out In tills communication I don' t want spontaneous developments are creating ide. I to dwell on the elementary distinction anything at all new, and if so, precisely direc­ between trade unions (willch carryon what? n the class struggles but never to their con­ !ism I clusion- only witilln the limits imposed UAW dly in by a corporate capitalist society) and a e that new form of (as yet undefined) revolu­ I t was very noticeable that you , 'here tionary workers' organization. This dis­ rudn't press Matles on the question of II un­ tinction is so clearly understood (and the Auto-Teamsters Alliance for Labor itique repeated ad nauseam) by the new left Action (ALA). He merely reports that would as to obscure the importance of the Reuther has declared his intention to would question: why do American unions give leadership in the areas of organizing ,oints. carry out their (admittedly limited) black caucuses, and he might have the unorganized, social and foreign :e this functions of struggle and defense of added the Black Lung strike in West policy, etc. That is two-year-old news. workers' interests so poorly? Brother Virginia and a number of struggles for Eve non the rhetorical level, the Matles seemed to be addressing several union democracy. But what does it all Reuther and Meany polemics deserve '!vert aspects of that question. Other aspects add up to? Some radicals see, further investigation; on first rearung, • weren't raised by the interview. I want mistakenly I believe, the emergence of a both sides come out looking pretty bad to comment on ills answers to the general alternative to "sellout" or (perhaps you could commission a book questions you did raise, and suggest "establishment" labor leadersillp. At review). Much more important are the questions for future exploration. least one left party has been proclainUng concrete prospects for the use of the secre- tills for nearly a decade. I wonder lot per capita from UAW and Teamster 7S. It is incontestable that there is a whether it wouldn't be more precise to members that would create an ALA growing spirit of ruscontent at the view most of tills insurgency as in the fund running to over $3% million per rank-and-file level. A number of American tradition of "throwing the year. Do fuey have organizers? What spontaneous revolts have made it rascals out"? The rank-and-file is aware will be new about the new locals? Will visible- Matles points to contract that it is losing battles to inflation, they stay out of competition with rejections, to the officer elections in taxes, tired leadersillp, and other unions that have a jurisdictional daim Steel and other internationals, and to factors, but has no political idea of how to certain workers but haven't done rationj June 1969 37 anything for them? Will newly content to a debate that isn't going on. (2) are the program and strategic organized workers have their own Between Reuther and Meany, the assumptions of SDS ("bring the politics outfits, or will they be incorporated debate is mostly who has done less for of the youth movement to the working into large Teamsters or UA W locals? In mutually agreed goals, except in foreign class", organize support for DRUM and sum, what will be new about the ALA? policy (remote from workers' the Panthers, create cadres of immediate problems). revolutionary young workers) valid?

When Matles describes a working Class demands Stu de nts no longer need to be shop steward system, and the loyalty of convinced that the working class is his members due to economic gains (and There is a parallel line of thought to exploited in America. As open despite red-baiting), he is by implication be followed in the political sphere. a drnissions and anti-tuition demands describing part of what is lacking in the Matles' formulation here is that UE spread, at least that direction of the mainstream of labor. What makes up leaders attempt to lead workers in the student movement has the potential for good trade union practice? Within the opposite direction from the reactionary mutual aid with workers; this will be union, what initiative should the local path of Wallace, in contrast to other reinforced if SDS is able to continue to have? What should be its attitude leaders who hardly resist that drift at grow on commuter campuses. You toward arbitration? In the area of all. What is this "opposite direction" should be asking questions that move demands, what kind of economic policy and how is it different from supporting the student-worker alliance conception is a minimum standard; how should Humphrey against Wallace? It is just as from a slogan, applied mechanically, to working conditions be regulated; should true in the political area as on-the-job a political conception that has more privately negotiated welfare and pension that labor engages in no general meaning for workers than the good systems continue to be a major focus? mobilization or offensive against the wishes of SDS leaders. Part of our problem is that no one with p r iv i I eges and inequalities that are any authority in labor stands up and characteristic of our society. Sure, there says categorically: this is what labor's Questions and Answers is lobbying for tax reform and objective in terms of real income for its occupational safety, just as there are me m be rs should be; anybody who strikes for new kinds of protection for The questions I have suggested (and settles for less hurts the rest of us as covered wor kers. The question is: can many more) could be asked both of well as his own people. The last three anyone imagine a campaign or issue trade unionists and of would-be leaders years have seen a general wage offensive, (other than electing the Democratic of the working people who are popping with the highest rate of strikes since the nominee) around which rank-and-file up more and more frequently in the 1946 drive to catch up with wartime energy could be mobilized to the extent youth movement. If you can get a debate erosions. This time, nobody called it an that victory might become a serious going on any of these questions,you offensive, or set goals, because to do so possibility? Perhaps taxes are such an will be ahead of everybody else. If would have been to politicize labor issue. I f so, the question becomes how necessary, you might look up AJ. struggles, move them to a stage beyond can the issue be articulated and Muste's thinking on workers the business union style of industrial organized so that the true dimensions of education in the Twenties. We might relations. Nor have there been any class power and privilege are clarified? find that the low ebb of labor during standards set on-the-job, except Reaction's facile and racist explanations the open shop was not completely spontaneously from below. The Black thrive in the vacuum that exists when different from the low ebb of labor in Lung revolt (even though it came, there are no radical ini tia t ives. the current period, in which, despite conquered, and vanished in a few dues check-off and the union shop, the months) proved that on-the-job rank-and-file are disillusioned, barely Students and Labor standards of health, safety, etc., could connected to the official labor be made political issues; DRUM and movement, and asking in increasing parallel black workers movements are When you asked Matles about numbers where to go next. That, in doing something similar for racism in worker-student alliance theories, you short, is the question. the plant. Behind these articulated were probably probing for an opinion developments lies the general problem about the analyses of labor that are Fraternally, of work standards, trigger to countless current in the student movement. But in Paul Booth wildcats, but nowhere made a general order to get a sharp opinion on that, issue facing the unionized working class. you will have to pose the question more Perhaps it will take many more years to precisely. There are two related Paul Booth, a former SDS officer, make these unresolved issues articulate questions: (I) would a mass student has been active in organized labor. In a and bases for unified action; in the movement organized around a general forthcoming issue of Liberation, Booth interim, let's be specific about what program of university reform be a useful will attempt to answer many of the they are, rather than mumbling about ally of labor, or would a disciplined questions he raises here. exploitation in general. Today there is organization of ex-student no open debate in labor about any of revolutionaries with a clear and sensible these questions, and you can't add class perspective be more helpful? and

38 Liberation .c :s Ig d Letter to the Movement: vernon grizzard If

Dear Friends, body or another, but rather the deci­ bear the pressure of individual leader­ Ie I'm sorry I've delayed writing for so sions of emphasis and energy which ship as it is now defined, and so quite is long. It's the old fear that anything precede organizational decisions and naturally a man will try to share that n one writes must be The Final Word which are usually made individually. burden. This sharing most often takes Is that has kept me from sitting down at Being an individual leader involves the form of relating to a woman as a Ie the typewriter before this. Therefore, self-evident ego satisfactions, but it is private refuge. At the same time, the lr this won't be a manifesto, by any also trying emotionally. One feels call­ esprit of leadership is reserved for male Ie stretch of the imagination; at best it ed upon in every public or organi­ friends. zational situation to give direction and .0 will be a statement of some of the I believe this is an instance of move­ u major concerns I've felt in the last meaning to think of things which no ment people acting out roles inherited one else has thought of yet. The result 'e couple of months. from the nuclear family in a capitalist I've been very excited recently by sor,iety (where, for instance, the privi­ n some developments in the female libera­ The infonnal format of a "letter leges men enjoy in the private world of o tion movement. I have felt sympathy to the movement" has been designed their family operate as compensation ·e and understanding for some years to let people write about whatever is for the oppression they suffer in the d about "the woman question," but it is on their mind without having to con­ public, social world of work). As we only recently that 1 have been able to form to the structural requirements take care on a personal level not to consider consciously the implications of an article. Unsolicited letters will recreate the patterns of privilege associ­ of this question for the male caste be considered for publication. ated with the nuclear family, we also under capitalism and within the move­ Vernon Grizzard works with SOS must develop an understanding of the d ment. Female liberation will not be in New England and is presently on nuclear family as an oppressive institu­ )f achieved by opening up to women the staff of The Old Mole. He travel­ tion which, along with private property :s those roles now open primarily to led to Hanoi in July, ) 968, to nego­ and the state (to paraphrase Engels), should not long survive a communist .g men , just as black liberation is not to tiate the return of captured American .e be found through integration into th e fliers. Last summer, Vernon was on revolution. e dominant and oppressive white society. the committee staff of the National Our goal should be to create revolu­ tionary organizations based on a shared u Liberation means overthrow and redefi­ Mobilization Committee for the Chi­ If nition, not open access to already cor­ cago demonstration. commitment to conununism which can take into account an individual's J. rupted positions and roles. ·s This holds for the movement, as strengths and weaknesses without con­ is a tremendous and unwarranted pres­ stantly calling into question his ego. It well as for the society at large. I don' t sure on a singl e perso n. or on very few g mean to argue that the movement is As organizations come to be formed the same as the society we are trying people . An individual who perceives on this basis, I think we will find Y that he is being looked to as a leader n to overthrow, but I do mean to argue many more people willing and able to that we have been scarred by . that will naturally try to live up to that exercise initiative and leadership, as the e ex pectation, eve n when he is no more process of making a decision and the e society, and that our current defini­ tions of leadership roles, ones which sure than others in the group about cost of making a mistake will not be y are of necessity almost always held by what should be done. Often, he per­ the exclusive property of one person. Ir men, need to be changed, rather than ceives that people's belief in themselves Without the intolerable pressure that g merely opened up to women. depends partly on whether or not their Singular leadership now imposes, [ sus­ n I want to describe briefly what I confidence in him is justified. Instead pect that men will increasingly find it think would be the effects of greater of others le arning how to share leader­ easier to turn to other men- as well as consciousness of the system of sexual sllip skills. the consequence of the to women-for support. caste oppression. First, the style of le ader's strenuous work may simply be [ am not proposing that we will leadership most common now in the increased admiration for his ta lents. move toward the unrealistic utopia of movement is very individualistic and It is small wonder that under such no leaders, but rather to the kind of Cicer, makes individual leaders almost inac­ pressure as this in public situations, an organization in which leadership is open to male and female alike, acces­ In a cessible to any but intimate friends. individual leader will seek plivate situa­ tions where he can be understood, be sible and accountable to anybody seek­ ooth Most people in the movement don't . the know how leaders spend their time or listened to, have his ideas sympathet­ ing to join the movement. the manner in which they arrive at ically challenged and periodically con­ Vernon Grizzard important decisions. I don't mean the firmed. And this is where women all • final decisions, which are usually sub­ too often come into the picture. It is ject to the approval of one organized indeed inhuman to expect a man to

11 June 1969 39 A CoU{Jtf (}P '{eARS AGO [ 6'AV5 uP RfAVltlb A 5fRifs (J A-RT1C~fs Bt( OAVt V't~~1 NGfR ON HI) tRIP 10 cUbA 8fCAIft H(fl 08V/o U5t t( 86eN' tr

Wfl)HtV - ...... • .... • .... • .. • .. •• .. • ...... ·COMING: T OM HAY DEN on Community Orga nizing / STAUGHTON L YND on Writ ing " Guerrilla" H istory / EQBAL AHMAD on the M ideast / PAUL POTTER on the Movement / A Syrnposium o n Teac hi ng in Commu nity Co lleges / A Report on t he New Left's First Generatio n / D rug "Reha b ilit ation" Programs / The History of a H arlem Street ...... CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: NOAM CHOMSK Y, W ILLI AM A PPLEMA N WILLI A MS, PAU L BOOTH , ARTHUR KINO Y , D A N BERR IGAN, FRANK BARDAC K E, J E RRY RU B IN,CARL OG LESBY, FRANZ SC H URMANN, r------Send m e LI BERATt ON for a y ear beginning with the July I 1 iss u e, I a m e n closin g $5 (student rate) or $7 (regular 1 rate) . At no e x tra cost send me a complimentary copy of LIBERATION's do uble issue on the "War Crimes 1 I Tribuna l." I LIBERATION's new address is: 339 Lafayette Street 1 New York, N,Y. 10012

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