Re: [Marxism] SDS

[Brian Shannon <brian_shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm teaching my own course on the sixties at present, to stage 2 and  
3 (second and third year of BA) students in a History Dept summer  
school here. Among the many readings I give them are speeches by  
Kennedy and Johnson and the 1962 Port Huron document.

Today, I've just downloaded the Paul Potter 1965 "Name the System"  
speech and Carl Oglesby's "Let us Shape the Future" from later in 1965.

These are impressive speeches and impressive people.

The SWP-YSA really stuffed up on the whole SDS thing!!!!

SDS leaders' insights into the most alienating and dehumanising  
elements of capitalism and their critique of Cold War liberalism,  
from virtually the birth of SDS, is really very impressive.  
Especially considering where SDS came from - ie the League for  
Industrial Democracy.

Imagine seeing SDS as rivals to be undermined and screwed over  
instead of people to try to seriously and genuinely work with and  
build a socialist movement with!

Crazy!

—Phil

    *  *  *  *  *
 By November 1968 (and afterwards), the alternatives seemed to be  
picking up the gun or picking from among the candidates the ruling  
class would permit to live and run for office. At the time, I think  
that most of us recognized that either of these put all the eggs in  
one basket...that is, choosing one of these created a dynamic that  
would allow that solution to select itself in the future. A very  
small proportion of what had been there actually made its way past  
the Democratic addiction.

 It always seemed to me that the SWP and the Left saw student  
radicals as a renewable resource. Generally, they viewed radicals  
with any experience in something like the SDS as simply pains-in-the- 
neck who asked questions and argued. They wanted to bring in the  
inexperienced and more malleable, so that what they'd learn would be  
under the particular tutelage of the organization.
—Mark Lause
____________

When discussing SDS, one has to separate the founders and what they  
wrote from the SDS that developed in the late 1960s. Most of the  
founders either stood aside from what happened later or became  
involved in other related activity. By the late 1960s, there were two  
SDSs: one was the leadership and their competing factions; the other  
was the rank and file, which was not kind of rank and file that is  
linked to leadership—they were an entirely different group as Peter  
Buch and I learned long before books were written that also pointed  
this out.

The general statements of the early SDS had no connection to their  
actual practice. For several years, they were a minor force on the  
campus, despite one of the best named organizations ever. SDS took  
off after the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, which expressed in  
action some of their ideology, and the 1965 Vietnam March in  
Washington, D.C. As students began to identify with action, they  
formed their own chapters, but with practically no connection with  
their national office. The experience that Peter Buch and I had with  
the students at Smith College is completely consistent with SDS's  
collapse.

Peter Buch was a Socialist Workers Party candidate for congress in  
New York City in the 1968 election. I was working on the national  
campaign staff for Halstead and Boutelle. Peter and I were sent on a  
speaking tour to meet some campus contacts from the election  
campaign. Included were Yale, Smith College, Goddard and one or two  
others. Later we made another tour in the South, where Peter spoke at  
LSU, Southern University and others whose names escape me.

The meeting that I remember best was at Smith College, where Peter  
was sponsored by the local SDS chapter. For these young people, those  
who ran for office outside of the two-party system, in particular  
outside the Democratic Party, was in the category of space aliens.  
They hadn't heard that SDS was a radical organization. The rank-and- 
file of the estimated 50,000 members nationwide probably joined  
because they thought that it was a very active open student  
empowerment organization. Those who have written that it was an  
extreme left organization have substituted the fight within the  
leadership for the real politics of the members, which were not that  
different from young Democrats except for their desire for some sort  
of action outside the electoral arena.

Of course, there were chapters that started out and maintained their  
militancy, having only light association with the former leadership.  
And one might consider them also part of SDS. But the overwhelming  
majority of the thousands that swelled their ranks before it broke  
apart continued on the liberal Democrat trajectory that they had  
started with.

It was no surprise to most of the SWP that the fight between the  
Weatherpeople and the two RYMs did not involve the membership. The  
rank and file membership had no idea what it was about. They walked  
away once Kennedy was shot, McCarthy lost, and Humphrey became the  
candidate.

One final point for Phil. I don't believe that there was summing up  
over the decision not to get involved in SDS. However, there was a  
general agreement that had we joined in, what happened to SDS would  
not only not have helped us, it would have set us back. The  
donnybrook that took place would simply have put us in the mix with  
PL and the Weatherpeople. Lots of pain and no gain.

Brian Shannon





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