Re: Slander

[Apsken@xxxxxxxxxxx]

    In all of Sol Dollinger's ranting, he never explained how it was that the
brave Chicago Cochranites were so adept at surviving McCarthyism while all
their rivals were hiding out, yet not a trace of their structure remained
just one or two years later, while all the parties he disparaged were
functioning quite well and growing. In Chicago, those activities included the
erupting civil rights movement (where E.D. Nixon was revered as the planner
of Rosa Parks's Montgomery protest and the man who recruited Martin Luther
King to the movement, not unknown, contrary to Sol's account), the peace
movement that brought out thousands of marchers against nuclear weapons every
year, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and mass protests against the Cuban
blockade, rank and file labor militancy, mass meetings on college campuses
and socialist/communist takeovers of student governments, and so forth. The
reason his account can't explain these developments is because his picture is
a myth. I have nothing at all against his shrine to his own sect; what I
object to is his false caricature of the rest of the left.
    On second thought, I do question the creation of such a shrine, if it has
to take on such a sectarian, theological aura. I take pride in the
accomplishments of the political organizations with which I was affiliated --
and I would say that member-for-member the followers of C.L.R. James probably
achieved more of lasting value than Bert Cochran's followers did, especially
during the leanest postwar years -- but if celebrating those accomplishments
requires rewriting everyone else's as unworthy, it's a bad idea. Considering
that the American Socialist's noblest hour was its confession of failure,
implicitly acknowledging an incorrect analysis of the postwar historical
epoch, it is ironic that Sol demands such religious devotion to such things
as a single meeting.
    If indeed the Cochranites were the sole functioning leftists in Chicago
in 1957, why would it matter that they struggled for socialist regroupment?
To ask that question is to show the absurdity of Sol's argument. They
participated in the project, as did everyone else, because the entire left
was seeking a new point of departure. And, as the thread we began with has
haltingly attempted to discuss before Sol began tub-thumping for his favorite
sect, the failure of socialist regroupment led more or less directly to the
political vacuum that the New Left occupied, with many evident shortcomings.

Ken Lawrence