[Marxism] "he said, she said"

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

My son is in France for a semester. The person he was assigned to live
with is a deeply troubled man. He kicked my son (a model of rectitude)
out and still has my son's bicycle. My e-mail to him has a long
historical note.
_________

THE BICYCLE:

(1) This guy is not giving it back without a really big fight (or the
threat of it) by the school or the police.
(2) Authorities almost universally have a "he said; she said" attitude.
By that I mean that they think that there is wrong on both sides. It is
an institutional mind-set. And it is not just authority. If you tell
someone a story, they will immediately want to find out the other guy's
story, even if they are inclined to believe you.

Let me tell you a story. As usual, there is a long set-up:

The Socialist Workers Party was a strong defender of democratic rights.
We sold our newspapers on street corners and at meetings. If we
participated in a broad coalition we made sure that all the
organizations had the right to sell and distribute their own
literature, even if it was critical of us. This is not to pat ourselves
on the back. It was always the tradition of the radical movement.

This is the tradition today as well. Last Saturday I attended an
antiwar conference in Connecticut held at Central Connecticut State
University. All across the back of the meeting hall tables were set up
by local and national organizations--one or two by individuals.

This tradition was broken above all by the Communist parties after they
came under the direction of the Stalinized Soviet Union. The founders
of our organization were sometimes attacked by Communist Party members
in NYC and elsewhere. One time these thugs broke up one of our
meetings. At a later meeting defense guards recruited from our own
members as well as other left groups protected the meeting, driving off
the attackers, sending one of them to the hospital. That put a halt to
it, but of course from time to time other conflicts arose. You must
remember that in the Soviet Union thousands on thousands were similarly
attacked, killed, sent to labor camps, etc. A blinded CP member who
supported the purges in the Soviet Union did not blanche at beating an
"enemy of the working class", i.e., Trotskyists, in the United States.

Fast forward 35 years. In the early 1960s, a pro-Maoist group
(Progressive Labor Movement) split off from the Communist Party. It
held that the CP had become bourgeois and that the Chinese Communist
Party, under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung, had inherited the mantle
of Lenin ... and Stalin! In some respects this was a split to the
"left." But it did not have the Left's democratic tradition, for it
felt that Stalin, despite some mistakes (!), had lead the Soviet Union
and the world's communist parties in a positive revolutionary
direction.

For a short period, before they became fixed in their ideas, we had
friendly relations with PL. They spoke at a few of our public meetings.
I don't recall that we worked with them in any organization, although
they may have participated in Fair Play for Cuba, which we were active
in. But by the mid-1960s, they had set up a formal organization and
changed their name to Progressive Labor Party.

There was great turmoil in China itself and the Chinese leadership
expressed this internationally, writing pamphlets critical of several
communist parties, including the American Communist Party (small
pamphlet) and the Italian Communist Party (a small book). This
attracted some revolutionary minded young people into its ranks.

By 1966 it had won over a couple of dozen people (perhaps more) in the
San Francisco Bay Area. We were a larger organization and had
established ourselves as allies and leaders in civil rights, civil
liberties, and anti-Vietnam war organizations. It was necessary for PL
to "harden" its membership against us, for in many ways, the
pro-revolutionary psychology of its young members was similar to that
of our own.

In either 1966 or 1967, some members of my organization were selling
our newspaper, The Militant, in San Francisco. Undoubtedly this
location was a favorite one. Our three or four salespeople were set
upon by a larger force of PL members. Their papers were seized and
scattered and there were some minor injuries.

We immediately set out to publicize this attack on our civil liberties.
I took an active part in this by going to the major "underground"
newspaper of the time, the Berkeley Barb. I had worked for Max Scherr,
the owner of the Barb, when he owned a beer and wine bar called The
Steppenwolf, and I had a friendly relationship with him. We were quite
successful at placing stories in the paper. I described what had
happened. In fact, I believe that I even wrote a story on it or at
least a description of the facts so he could rewrite it. Max of course,
and quite legitimately, wanted to hear the other side. By the time the
story was written it became a "he said, she said" story. A close
reading might indicate that we were the ones telling the truth, but the
tone was "tut, tut, aren't those old left groups sort of ridiculous."

And I am still burned up about it.

So don't feel that the school is going to be pro-active on your part.
In fact, I would like to know to whom I should write. Perhaps as your
parent, I can set a fire under them.


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