Subject: Re: M-I: SWP's current practice From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 1997 12:12:58 EDT OK, Jon, I see where you're coming from. And it's true, the blame for the current state of the SWP can't simply be laid at the feet of Jack Barnes. I attended the Socialist Scholars Conference session on "Writing the History of Trotskyism: Two Views," sponsored by Humanities Press (publisher of TROTSKYISM IN THE U.S.), where Alan Wald gave his "broad and philosophical" views on US Trotskyism. A fellow named Roy Rollins declared that he preferred Wald's views to Paul Le Blanc's because at least I was an open revisionist while Le Blanc was "crypto." Dorothy Breitman, widow of George Breitman, went on to explain that Le Blanc is a *true* Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist while "Wald is just an academic who writes well and who is a very nice person." Such talk makes me want to puke. Have these people learned nothing about hammering "orthodoxy" down others' throats? Alan also had to deal with Bolshevik Tendency people throwing old and tired accusations at him regarding the SWP's behavior in the late 1960s. Some woman from the Spartacist League showed up later at the Tamiment Library, spewing out the same tired shit. As if having "incorrect" positions could alone explain the degeneration of the SWP! As if having "correct" positions has lead the Sparts and BTers to the leadership of mass movements! (At least I now know that Frank Lovell brought the wrong glasses to the Taminent, couldn't read his prepared talk, and was trying to fake it, which explains why his speech was so excruciating.) Both panels depressed and bored me. It seems to me that the main heritage of the SWP is one of sectarianism and self-righteousness. There was little at either of these panels to inspire a new generation of radicals. They simply reinforced my belief that Tim Wohlforth is right in his descriptions of the internal life of such groups as extraordinarily unhealthy. I should note that the SWP was the first socialist group I ever encountered. I knew nothing of their history then; I found them laughable. Was *The Militant* always so poorly written? At least *Workers Vanguard* has entertainment value. -- Jason ______ "For Marx, the theoretical axis of CAPITAL -- the core around which all else develops -- is the question of plan: the despotic plan of capital against the cooperative plan of freely associated labor." Raya Dunayevskaya , *Marxism And Freedom* (1958), p.92. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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