Re: The weird men behind Bush's war

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 4 Apr 2003 15:56:46 -0500 Shane Mage <shmage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
writes:
> Jim Farmelant wrote:
> >
> >Neoconservatism as a movement did evolve out of American
> >Trotskyism, with James Burnham as probably one of the
> >earliest examples of a Trot who subsequently shifted to
> >the right, who was then followed by many others (i.e. Max
> >Eastman, Sidney Hook, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Nathan
> >Glazer, Norman Prodhoretz, Midge Decter, Getrude
> >Himmelfarb, and many, many more).  However, most
> >of those people are either dead or in their dotage right
> >now.  Most of the neocons in the Bush Administration
> >are intellectual, and in some cases( like Bill Kristol),
> >biological, descendents of the original neoconservatives.
>
> This has been repeated ad nauseam, and always with much
> less than moderate truthfulness.  How many of these were
> actually "Trotskyists": ie., members of an organization
> affiliated with the Fourth International?  Burnham, certainly
> (until 1940).  Eastman and Hook, certainly not.

Hook as I recall, was a founder of the American Workers Party
and was organisationally instrumental in arranging the merger
between the American Workers' Party and James Cannon's
Communist League of America thus giving birth to the Socialist
Workers' Party.  Hook, however, soon dropped out of the
Socialist Workers Party, when he saw that it would be dominated
by James Cannon's people.  Hook also managed to recruit
his teacher, John Dewey, to the defense of Trotsky against
Stalin's charges.  Irving Kristol, in his youth was
a member of the SWP, and has always considered that to
have been one of his most important formative experiences.
(See excerpts from his *From Memoirs of a Trotskyist*
at www.pbs.org/arguing/nyintellectuals_krystol_2.html).

Max Eastman, to my knowledge, had little, if any involvement
in organized Trotskyism, but then again he had been a friend
of Trotsky, and had served as his translater and literary agent.
He produced translations for such works by Trotsky as
*The History of the Russian Revolution* and * Revolution
Betrayed*.

Jim F.

> As for the
> others, none ever held a position of leadership at any level
> of a 4th Internationalist organization and, as far as I
> know, none was even a member however much some may
> have "sympathized" for a few months.  If anyone can
> come up with a reference to even one article in the
> Trotskyist press by any of these luminaries I'd like
> to know about it.
>
>   Shane Mage
>
> "immortals mortals, mortals immortals, living their deaths, dying
> their lives"
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
>
>
>


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