[Marxism] "Left in form, right in essence"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Although Ted Glick has wrapped his attacks on the Nader campaign in the
kind of bland obsequiousness Charles Dickens immortalized in the
character Pecksniff, his latest reveals the snarling Commissar beneath.

Using the title of Carl Davidson's 1973 pamphlet "Left in form, right in
essence" as a club to bash Peter Camejo over the head with, Glick
neglects to include Davidson's subtitle: "A Critique of Contemporary
Trotskyism." It is no accident that Glick would find inspiration in this
dreary screed written during the period when dozens of Maoist sects were
hoping to breathe new life into the discredited party-building model of
William Z. Foster and his subsequent replacements.

Davidson wrote his attack in the pages of the Guardian newspaper back
then in an attempt to create a pole of attraction for the thousands of
ex-SDS'ers who were lurching from new left impressionism to the kind of
ultra-Stalinism that actually helped to destroy SDS through the agency
of the Progressive Labor Party.

Davidson's pamphlet contains jewels such as the following:

"The Trotskyists believe they are the only authentic practitioners of
the policy of the united front. Yet in practice, they have opposed full
implementation, either from rightist or 'leftist' positions. The most
apparent example of this role was the Trotskyist attitude toward World
War 2, in which they took a 'defeatist' position towards the capitalist
governments fighting the fascists, called for the 'revolutionary'
overthrow of the Soviet government and opposed the united front with the
national bourgeoisie in the colonial countries invaded by the fascists.
The fact that the Trotskyist line led them inevitably to these positions
substantiated the charge that they objectively served the interests of
the fascists."

full: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/critiques/guardian/index.htm

This disgusting smear is drawn from the same cesspool as Glick's
assertion that "that Camejo hopes that Bush/Cheney will win
re-election." The logic behind this kind of character assassination,
which actually drove the CPUSA to back Smith Act convictions of
Trotskyist leaders during WWII, is based on the assumption that WWII was
a "people's war". To refute such a claim, it is not necessary to read
Trotskyist literature. You can find essentially the same arguments from
Howard Zinn and a host of new left historians--including Gar Alperovitz.

In 1967, after New Dealer LBJ escalated the war in Vietnam, new leftists
were forced to come to terms with the legacy of US wars and whether they
ever had a progressive purpose. One of the saddest things about ardent
ABB'ers like Davidson and Glick is their failure to remember the lessons
that new left historians taught us about the Democratic Party and its
Wilsonian crusades for "democracy" and Wall Street profits.

In arguing for a Kerry vote (or the next best thing--a vote for David
Cobb), Glick puts forward a really addled argument drawn from a
misreading of American history:

"Since World War II the strongest, national, progressive third party
movements have developed when Democrats were in power. The first example
was the Henry Wallace/Progressive Party effort in 1948 when Harry Truman
was President. Then there was the 1968 national Peace and Freedom Party
effort when Johnson was President. The decade of the '90s, when Bill
Clinton was in office, was a decade which saw the emergence of three
major efforts, the Green Party, the Labor Party and the New Party."

To begin with, it is very striking that Glick has nothing to say about
the 1930s when the objective possibility for a 3rd party based on the
working class was greater than at any time since Eugene V. Debs. We know
why such a party was not launched. The CPUSA, which enjoyed hegemony,
attacked every initiative to build one using the same
class-collaborationist arguments as Carl Davidson and Ted Glick. It was
necessary to back FDR because he was not as bad as--you fill in the blanks.

Although historian Harvey Klehr has endeavored to portray the CPUSA as a
dangerous subversive organization, his own research militates against
his thesis. In "The Secret World of American Communism," he discusses an
NKVD report on communications between Earl Browder, the head of the
CPUSA, and Franklin Roosevelt. FDR congratulates Browder and the CPUSA
for conducting its political line skillfully and helping US military
efforts. Roosevelt is "particularly pleased" with the battle of New
Jersey Communists against a left-wing Labor Party formation there. He
was happy that the CPUSA had been able to unite various factions of the
Democratic Party against the left-wing electoral opposition and render
it ineffectual.

This is exactly the role that Glick is playing today, our latter-day but
inferior version of Earl Browder.

--

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