Re: [Marxism] Re: SWP offices

[Lance Murdoch <lancemurdoch@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 26 Oct 2004 09:04:00 GMT, Lueko Willms <l.willms@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> LM> The bookstore (545 8th
> LM> Ave, 14th floor, between 37th and 38th Street) is quite near Penn
> LM> Station, so it wasn't much of a hassle for me to pop by and see if it
> LM> was open after work.
>    you will find that the address of the bookstore together with the
> national headquarters is here:
>
>    306 W. 37th Street, 10th floor, New York, NY 10018.
>    Tel: (212) 629-6649. E-mail: newyorkswp@xxxxxxxxx

I placed both addresses into http://www.mapquest.com and both show a
star on the cross section of 37th Street and 8th Avenue.  I know
virtually all Verizon buildings in Manhattan use two addresses for the
same building, one with Street name and one with the Avenue name.  I
am not physically standing in front of it now so I don't know if these
are likewise two addresses for the same building or not.
Nevertheless, I went to the address that was given to me by the SWPer,
and no one ever seemed to be there.  Incidentally, the old CPUSA
bookstore in Manhattan, Unity Books, closed down about a year or two
ago.  A CPUSA'er told me they were planning on reopening in another
location at some point.

One reason I'm focusing on splits for the first draft is more for
technical reasons than for narrative.  I'm putting it on a wiki, which
utilizes hypertext, and I wanted to link out to all the split groups
that I knew about in case I wanted to write an article about that
group before doing a second draft.  And sometimes my investigations
into say the WWP will yield information about the SWP, as some WWP'er
reminisces about SWP days.  I now have links in the article to the
Workers Party, Socialist Union, Workers World Party, American
Committee of the Fourth International, Freedom Socialist Party, Class
Struggle League, Socialist Action, and Solidarity (as well as the
Fourth International and subsequent ICFI, ISFI, USFI, ACFI, and
whatever the SWP calls its International now, which I don't know,
although one source calls it an SL similar name - the International
Communist League, Pathfinder tendency).

Of course many of these groups themselves split and merged and split,
starting with the first SWP split, Workers Party, which became the ISL
(which had a magazine, not a group, sort of split out of - Dissent.
Actually you might say neoconservatism split out of the WP/ISL as
well) and then merged with the SP (which at that time seemed to have
been called SP-SDF due to the SDF merger), after which (I believe -
many sources say Hal Draper did this in 1964 but I'm still not quite
firm on the date), the Independent Socialist Club was formed, which
became the Independent Socialist Clubs and then the International
Socialists, which had the Revolutionary Socialist League,
International Socialist Organization and Workers Power split off, many
of these groups themselves having splits, which I won't go into here.
Nor will I go into here the Revolutionary Tendency either, which split
many, many times.

As far as accuracy in research, there's a lot of false information out
there.  I wouldn't even be able to go into how much I've seen.  One
example that comes to mind is the now discontinued "Red Encyclopedia"
( http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html ) says that the Revolutionary
Workers League formed in a split with the Spartacist League.  I have
since learned that this may not have been the case, that the RWL
leaders were probably never SL although they may have been friendly
with the SL.  My best guide to accuracy has been to look for multiple
sources and that sort of thing.  I have left a lot of information out
where I have been unsure.  The questions I asked are not the end to
the ones I have.  For example, the founding of the first Independent
Socialist Club is a bit unclear to me.  What I am about to say I'm not
sure of, which is why I haven't included it in one of the articles,
it's more of a question than statements of fact that I know to be
true.  It seems like Draper was against the ISL entering the SP/SDF
but he seems to have gone along with it.  Then in 1964 in Berkeley he
formed the Independent Socialist Club which included most of the
SP/SDF's YPSL.  Joel Geier of YPSL was a big factor in this as well.
Later on Sy Landy formed an affiliated club in New York (no idea
when).  As I said, what I just said is from what I gathered, can't
vouch for the accuracy of it, which is why I didn't include most of it
in my thing.  For all I know Draper left the ISL in a huff in 1957 and
formed the ISC in 1961, which no one cared about until the 1964 Free
Speech Movement started up and YPSL joined.

Anyhow, I am working on COINTELPRO stuff in draft #2, including the
FBI informers (at least one out of ten members from 1960-1966),  the
black bag jobs, the wiretaps (the first being on Farrell Dobbs hotel
room in 1943), the FBI's "SWP Disruption Program" with its in-party
informers attempting to sabotage the party, its anonymous letters like
the one to African-American SWPer Paul Boutelle, supposedly from an
anonymous SWPer (actually from the FBI) calling him and other other
blacks in the SWP "party monkeys" whose leaving the SWP would not
result in much of a "brain drain" and so forth.  I'll also try to get
to Vietnam, more students than workers being recruited and so forth.
As well as what the SWP and its various groupings lines were on the
nature of the Soviet Union (doing that is a thrill a minute).

Anyhow, I may be reading the Wohlforth book today, so that may provide
me some more insight.

Fraternally,
Lance

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