Re: SWP policy, as I recall it, on travel to Cuba

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Fred Feldman:
> Further, I'm opposed to overhyping the Orwell analogies re the SWP's
> organizational practices. The term "unperson" in '1984' refers, I
> believe, to those who have been either outlawed and, with the doubtful
> exceptions of Emmanuel Goldstein and a few others, physically liquidated
> by the regime.  Books, newspapers, and official records are then combed
> for possible favorable references to them which are either deleted or
> edited into denunciations or proof of their eternal villainy.

Fred, with all due respect, this is not what I was getting at. I was being
ironic.

That being said, I do know a little bit what it is like to become an
unperson. When I decided to resign from the SWP in 1978, a NC member flew
to Kansas City to persuade me to stay in. When she realized that my mind
was made up, she asked me to do the party a favor. Since I was a respected
member of the party who had been in for over a decade, and since my
departure would be a sign that middle-class elements were unable to make
the "turn toward industry", it would be best if my resignation were kept
secret. The KC branch was told that I was moving back to NYC for personal
reasons and New York branch members never knew that I had returned to the
city as an ex-member. In other words, after 11 years I just sort of
disappeared from the party rolls without any public acknowledgement. Back
then, I accepted this with equanimity because it was for "the good of the
party". Anybody who tried to get me to do such a thing nowadays would get a
punch in the mouth.


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org