[PEN-L:29523] Max Elbaum in Sacramento

["Seth Sandronsky" <ssandron@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Max Elbaum in Sacramento

Activist and author Max Elbaum spoke to 50 people at the Marxist School of 
Sacramento on August 15.  He summarized material in his new book titled 
Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, 
published in June by Verso.  ME?s special focus was what a previous 
generation of radicals got right and wrong, and what lessons are applicable 
to current events.

According to ME, the revolutionary movements of the 1960s evolved slowly 
from the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott against white racism.  This and 
subsequent protests against racial discrimination, year after year, 
eventually grew to include widespread opposition to the Vietnam War.  Those 
least free defined what freedom meant in a way that resonated widely.  An 
era of mass politics with a recognized social standing emerged as a living 
force in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, and the assassinations of 
Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.  The direct experiences of a broad 
number of people during 1968 ? 1974 was a period in which some US radicals 
turned to Third World movements of national liberation.  Why?  For ME, the 
two motivating factors were these movements? dynamism in challenging 
imperial power and worldwide white supremacy.

Some US radicals felt that such foreign movements were applicable to social 
conditions in America.  One anecdote that ME shared sheds some light on how 
this view perhaps came to be during such heady times in the US.  Millions of 
ordinary people were in the streets.  Publications like Newsweek wrote that 
the US was facing an imminent insurrection.  On that note, ME said that 
after handing out leaflets on college campuses for anti-war demonstrations, 
attendance would increase rapidly.  One week 10,000 people would 
participate.  Then he and other radicals would repeat the leafleting process 
and 15,000 people would turn out.  Subsequently, 25,000 would show up for 
the next demonstration.  ?You start thinking that it?s the great leaflet 
that?s getting all these people out,? ME said with a laugh.  What to do 
after the demonstrations to effect social change was another kettle of fish, 
of course.

At the same time, these radicals set out to build a movement in the US more 
Leninist than that of the CPUSA, ME said.  He spoke to this issue of 
inter-generation conflicts between the Old and New Left.  The causes and 
consequences of their conflicts were shaped in part by the Great Depression, 
World War 2 and the post-WW2 boom.  In extreme brevity, the breaks between 
the Old Left and the New Left were damaging.  Opportunities to learn lessons 
about united fronts against the changing forces of power and privilege were 
missed.  Many involved in US social movements of the 1960s suffered as a 
result.  Concerning his generation and today?s, ME said that young people 
want to know what happened in the 1960s, then will do with this information 
what they will.  He sees the telling of this historical experience not as a 
prescription for future social change but as a dialogue between veterans and 
young people in which both will emerge stronger, not weaker.

Back to the 1960s and the Third World orientation of some US radicals.  
Within this framework, the Maoist tendency led the way, ME said.  Its 
central principles were the fights against imperialism and racism, and 
developing a revolutionary cadre in the US.  This focus attracted a large 
plurality of people.  By the mid-1970s this tendency became the New 
Communist Movement in which ME was active. The NCM fell into decline while 
the Chinese Cultural Revolution weakened.  Other factors leading to the 
demise of the NCM were capitalism?s resiliency and radicals? inability to 
seize the political initiative, which the forces of reaction did.  
Meanwhile, the NCM proceeded from faulty political assumptions.  One was 
undue generalizations based on their limited experience.  Another was 
strategies high on rhetoric and low on participation.  Then there was a 
dogmatic mindset that prevented building a political base and instead built 
sects, while shunning true broad-mindedness for ?mini-Leninism.?  In all, 
there was a failure to link up with popular movements in the US.

Minus the socialist camps (China, Soviet Union) present during the 1960s, ME 
sees similar impulses for justice by today?s young US activists striving for 
a more humane society.  Examples include the mostly white Third World 
solidarity movements focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, forgiving 
IMF/WB debt and opposing corporate-led globalization generally. These young 
people partly remind him of those he was involved with in the anti-Vietnam 
War struggle. Some people now opposed to capitalism may self-identify as 
?anarchists,? versus how ME?s comrades did as Marxists-Leninists, but 
current activists are more similar than they perhaps realize to these 1960s 
radicals.  In addition, he sees the mostly non-white people?s anti-prison 
industrial complex and pro-African American reparations movements as heirs 
to the tradition of US people protesting racism.  They?re being driven by 
similar social conditions of injustice?including the economics of 
racism?that drove people to sit-in and march during the Civil Rights era.

ME is also an associate editor with War Times <www.war-times.org>, the 
monthly publication giving voice to anti-war and anti-racism activists.

Seth Sandronsky






















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